Catalonia

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By Dick Nichols

September 22, 2019 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — Below is a fragment of a conversation I had the day after 600,000 came out in Barcelona on September 11 to celebrate this year’s Catalan National Day (the Diada).

Occupying the Plaça d’Espanya and the surrounding streets, the vast crowd demanded the acquittal of the 12 Catalan social movement and political leaders presently awaiting a Spanish Supreme Court verdict on charges of rebellion, sedition and embezzlement, the release of the nine of them who have been in preventive detention for up to nearly two years, and an independence referendum.

Most of all, however, it called for a united strategy from the leaderships of the tension-ridden Catalan sovereignty and independence movement. Let the political parties—Together for Catalonia (JxCat), the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) and the People’s Unity List (CUP)—and the mass organisations—the Catalan National Assembly (ANC) and Òmnium Cultural—get their act together and show a way forward.