EH3ARRL is advocating Catalunya as a separate DXCC country

Browsing through my SSTV recordings on 14230 kHz I found this interesting call sign: EH3ARRL. The station was on air September 23rd, 11.41 h UTC. Checking the QRZ.com website I learned that the call sign EH3ARRL is owned by a group of amateur radio operators from Catalunya. EH3ARRL is advocating that Catalunya should be a separate DXCC country.

For those unfamiliar with the radio amateur jargon: ARRL is the American Radio Relay League, the national association for radio amateurs in the USA. DXCC stands for DX Century Club, an award for those operators who can confirm having worked stations from 100 countries. And of course the ARRL defines what counts as a country, and doesn’t. All over the world radio amateurs use the ARRL DXCC definition to determine how many countries they worked. By the way, as a DX-er I always used the EDXC country list, which is a bit different.

The EH3ARRL group argues that Catalunya, while being part of Spain, has its own government, own police and own telecommunications. And they have their own EA3 radio prefix. They quote examples like Scotland, England, Wales and various other territories and enclaves that are counted as a separate DXCC radio country, while they are also not an official state. If you agree with them you can sign their petition on the change.org website.

Later that afternoon I received the SSTV picture from EA3BIL, who happens to be one of the operators behind EH3ARRL.