M MIRALPEIX’S inspiring letter (Letters, The National, October 19) makes the kind of appeal to our humanity that the world’s greatest writers throughout the ages have made: do not stand by and see me crushed by a dictator’s aggression.

I agree that each one of us is Europe and that, unlike our political representatives, who serve each other rather than those who voted them into office, we should demand that our MPs, MSPs and MEPs intervene to stop Mariano Rajoy’s anti-democratic machinations against the people of Catalonia.

I shall write to mine, although I’ll have to look up who my MEP is, because that’s how little impact he or she has made on me or my life, and try to shame them into doing something, not just write or utter apparently supportive words in support of the Catalans.

This is a crisis not only for the EU but for each one of us. Let us think of ways to stand by our friends in Catalonia.

Lovina Roe, Perth