From the Daily Telegraph: “An annual festival of satire in Valencia has fallen foul of censorship after more than four centuries following the furore over Danish cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. In the Fallas festival, giant sculptures of the high and mighty are placed in the streets for the public to mock before being destroyed in an orgy of gunpowder and flames. It has survived attacks by the Roman Catholic church, various puritanical rulers and the Franco dictatorship…At least one well known local Fallas artist admitted to removing elements from his display of comic sculptures. He had sculpted three life-size figures of illegal Arab immigrants storming the Spanish border, in a reference to last year’s crisis in Ceuta and Melilla, Spain’s enclaves in North Africa, involving thousands of migrants. The artist has now removed details that identified them as Arabs. The artist asked not to be named, partly for fear of reprisals, partly because he did not feel proud of such “self-censorship”. But this year was “different”, he said. Radical Muslim leaders appeared to be looking for excuses to cause trouble. “We saw what happened in Denmark,” he said. “Those artists may have had the freedom to draw Mohammed, but now they’re living as virtual prisoners. They have much less freedom than before. I felt responsible not just as an artist, but as a citizen of this city.”

Ah yes, “responsibility”, the r-word again.

And so free speech dies. Bit by bit.