Comment: Goodness knows where you are coming from. 

The Catalan flag and its symbols is hated by the Spanish Government as it unifies, sort of, a historic area and language with much talk of independence / home rule. The old SA flag, if memory serves me, dates from about 1912 not 1948.
The destruction of books, Art, banning, etc was done by many who disagreed with them, whether the Nazi or today's UCT, or students of a destructive sort, educatable, I am less certain. 
I was not educated in SA but UK. 
Paper was not 'discovered' but manufactured, perhaps in Egypt, perhaps in todays Iraq, but out of reeds and not at all todays paper. Why you mention it I don't know.

The rest of what you say, were I to print it, would be consigned to the dustbin!