Anthony Corey Sánchez Alberto, a 16 year old boy, went last Friday, June 20th, at the offices of the Spanish National Police in Sabadell to renew his passport. He had planned in a few weeks to travel for holiday in the United Stated, so it was urgent to get the document. “Everything was going fine until it came time for my signature. In that moment an officer looks at it and tells me you can’t make political symbols, that what I have just done was an estelada.” Both he and his mother argued that the four bars included in the signature are not the four bars of the Catalan flag. He even showed his ID card, where his signature was accepted.
Is not the first time a policeman refuses to accept the application for a passport or an ID card claiming that the signatures in official documents can’t “represent political symbols”. In 2012, a 9 years old minor was unable to apply for her ID card, as an officer from a police station in Tarragona seemed to see a Catalan flag in the girls signature.
