13D, the countdown for Catalonia’s independence has started today

Catalonia wants independence

Today democracy is a bit stronger in Europe. Catalonia has spoken and it wants independence. With a turnover of almost 30% and 95% vote in favour of Catalonia to become a state within the European Union a clear message has been sent to the world and to Catalan politicians.

The Catalan society has organized itself in an unseen way with no official support, barely no budget but with the combined effort of an army of 20000 volunteers it has managed to organize in just a few weeks a voting that rivals in rigor, reliability and transparency any government promoted votings.

Those who critizise the referendums say that the turnover is not enough but let’s not forget that the 30% percentage is similar to the last European elections, for example, while these referendums had no budget for publicity and were largely ignored by the mainstream media, mostly controlled by the unionist government that only today have decided to give the event the coverage it deserves. Therefore a 30% turnover can only be interpreted as a huge success.

The voting has taken place peacefully and in a celebration atmosphere as people have gradually attended the voting stations from 9h until 20h when the votings have finished.

Even though the votings haven’t been organised by political parties the Catalan parties Reagrupament and ERC promoted to vote YES and CiU have encouraged people to vote while unionist parties PP, PSOE and Ciutadans have questioned the legitimacy of the referendums instead of promoting the vote for the NO.

With these referendums the Catalan independentist movement has achieved three targets:

  1. to bring independence to the first page of the political agenda and achieve the legitimacy that most Catalan politicians were denying it
  2. to force all parties to position themselves on the issue making it more difficult for the unionist parties to hide under a pretended neutrality
  3. to give an enormous international visibility to the Catalan cause

After the results have been made public Carles Móra, mayor of Arenys de Mar, acting as a spokesman for the National Referedums Coordinator, has declared that tomorrow they’ll officially propose a ILP (Popular Legislative Initiative) to urge the Catalan Parliament to hold a national binding referendum next April 25th.

The ball is in the politicians court.

Today I’ve felt deeply proud to be a Catalan. Visca Catalunya!

6 thoughts to “13D, the countdown for Catalonia’s independence has started today”

  1. As an international observer with ERC on Sunday, I was hugely impressed by this Citizens Initiative. Thousands of volunteers organised this through a desire for democracy. Accusations of political motivation and propaganda are wide off the mark. I asked volunteers at polling stations if they were political party members and not one of the activists were.

    There are lessons to be learned here for independence supporters in stateless nations around the world.

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