September 11th, “Catalonia new European state” demonstration

September the 11th is the anniversary of the fall of Barcelona under the Spanish and French armies in 1714. That day meant the loss of Catalonia’s constitution, institutions and independence. Almost 300 years later Catalonia is still struggling to recover it. September 11th is currently the Catalan national day. A day to remember the loss of our independence until it is recovered.

The National Catalan Assembly, ANC, of which I already wrote about here and here have organised a demonstration that is expected to be massive and may even beat the demonstration on 10th July 2010.

On 2010 Òmnium Cultural, a Catalan cultural association born during Franco’s repression of Catalan language, organised a demonstration to protest against the ruling of the Spanish Constitutional Court which mutilated the Catalan Statute of Autonomy which Catalans had voted in a referendum. Amongst other things this ruling stated that, according to the Spanish Constitution, Catalonia is not a nation and that Catalan language would have an inferior status to Spanish in Catalonia.

The theme of that demonstration was “We are a nation, we decide”. Even though it was not officially an independentist demonstration people in the streets were shouting for independence.

The two main differences of this demonstration with the previous one is that this time Catalans are not protesting against Spain. This one is intended more as a push to Catalan politicians to jump over the fence. The second difference is that that the theme is clearly independentist “Catalonia new European state”.

The demonstration on 2010 was the turning point for many political changes. The pro independence option is now clearly dominant and Spain’s intransigent attitude and attacks towards the Catalan nation and culture are pushing Catalans quickly into independentist options.

Spanish parties PP and PSOE are quickly losing support in Catalonia because of their contradictions. Catalan voters cannot understand why they don’t support for Catalonia to at least collect all its taxes and how can they tolerate and participate on the attacks to Catalan language.

And Catalan parties, which support different degrees of Catalan self government are progressively being forced by public opinion and the deep crisis to raise the bar for devolution claims. It is not understood why Catalonia is suffering a fiscal deficit of 18 billion euros every year with Spain and have to make more public services cuts than anywhere in Spain and why Spain is attacking Catalan language on all fronts.

What is frustrating is that the increase in Catalan independentism is not triggering any real political changes since Spain is ignoring them and repressing Catalan independentism, even recurring to violence and threats. Catalan government is in a position of extreme weakness to negotiate with Spain since they depend on fund transfers from Spain every month. And Spain cannot afford and doesn’t intend to give Catalonia a fair financial treatment.

So by the looks of it if Catalans want to achieve any real political changes it will have to be through unilateral declaration of independence and a transition to independence.

The ANC wants this demonstration to trigger the political changes to start the last phase before Catalonia becomes a new European state and to send a clear message to the world of what is about to happen and why.