Yesterday the 1st conference on Catalonia’s self determination took place and it was a success. Organised by Sobirania i Justícia, the same people behind the excellent documentary “Spain’s secret conflict”.
The conference took place throughout the day in Palau Robert in Passeig de Gràcia, Barcelona and included speeches by international experts Charles E. Ehrlich, responsible for the constitutional comission of the U.N. in Kosovo; Ana Stanic, who negotiated Slovenia’s secession with the serbians; Patrick Dunberry, Canadian expert and Carles Boix, from Princeton University who specifically analysed the Catalan case.
In my opinion, this is one of the best initiatives I have seen recently to help people visualize how to create the independent Catalonia and this is the type we need to let people realise that not only it is not so difficult but that most of the conditions for independence already exist.
The easy bits are that Catalonia would be perfectly financially viable as an independent state. That it already is part of the European Union and has a democratically elected government which represents its people. The harder part will be the international negotiations to recognise the new state and also splitting the assets and the passive with Spain, which will not collaborate. But these parts will be easier with the legitimacy of a referendum with a clear majority of pro independence votes.
Unfortunately I couldn’t be there but a collaborator was able to attend so we’ll soon publish a post about it here. I personally would have loved to see a live broadcast or youtube channel with the videos of the speeches. Those would have been extremely powerful tools to spread the message. However, Vilaweb has posted an excellent video with interviews to the experts, it’s trilingual in Catalan, English and French with Catalan subtitles. In case anyone is interested.
Picture by Sobirania i Justícia.