Many interesting things have happened in the last 10 Days in Catalonia and I wish I had been able to write about them but an intercontinental move, an awful cold I caught thanks to the Siberian cold wave that is sweeping Europe, some socialising and an unreliable internet connection have stopped me from doing so until today. But more to the point, I’ll write a few entries about the events enumerate the topics that I believe are important to be up to date on what’s going on in Catalonia right now.
Firstly, the aftermath of the 13D referendums, there has been some tensions between the organisers of the referendums. The story starts with the organisators splitting in two separate entities back in October, one comprising the consultations that took place in the Osona shire and led by Alfons López Tena and the other one taking care of the rest of the country.
When the results were made public it was clear that even though both organisations did an excellent job Tena’s team had achieved better results by means of a much higher participation and Alfons López Tena publicly criticised the other organisers. This caused some disappointment at first but seems like now both organisations have agreed to work together to learn from the past experiences and make it better in the February and April rounds of referendums.
It also seems that the Barcelona referendum might be held at a later time than the initially planned Apirl the 25th, to which I agree. The day it is done in Barcelona it has to be very carefully planned and the maximum amount of effort will have to be made to make sure it is a non arguable success. Therefore it might be beneficial to have a reasonable amount of time for preparation and as much experience from the previous referendums as possible.
The reaction to the referendums in the Spanish media was the obvious and expected one attempting to minimise it by stressing the “low” participation. They can keep fooling themselves (and their arrogance plays in Catalonia’s favour) but in my opinion if we keep making progress at this pace soon the process of organising a final binding referendum will reach the point of no return.