Plenty of Reasons for Independence

Agustí Barrera
Historian and Chemist, CUP member

It is hard for me to pick one of the many the reasons I have for advocating the independence of my country, Catalonia. I will comment on the most evident and important ones. If we lived in a normal country, with sovereign institutions, such pedagogical exercises would not be necessary.

As individuals, and also as a community, we want to be “ourselves.” As a nation we do not want Spain or France to take decisions about our own business instead of us.

We want independence to avoid feeling like foreigners in our own country. We want to have our own judicial system and economy, and laws that protect our people.

According to the polls conducted by the Centre d'estudis d'opinió (CEO), support for independence is constantly growing and, as of March 2012, in the event of a self-determination referendum, voter turnout would be 69.3%, and support for independence would be 64.4% of all the votes. Therefore, it is also a matter of democracy, a matter of respecting the will of a wide majority.

Because independence means more freedom in all aspects. It would put an end to the impositions by the Spanish government, which often legislates against our interests.

Without the fiscal plundering we are permanently subjected to (Catalonia loses every year around 22.000 million euros, i.e. around 60 million euros per day) our quality of life would greatly improve, and would have more hospitals, universities, kindergartens, nursing homes.

We want independence because every nation has the right to freely decide about its own present and future, the right to democratically decide how to live. This principle is known as the right of self-determination.

We want independence because we want to restore and promote our culture, history, literature, science and arts.

We want independence so that the Catalan language and culture can be given the international visibility they deserve, as essential elements of our identity. We want to be present in the world with our own personality, as a nation, enriching universal culture with our own.

And, finally, we want independence because we want to break free from external impositions.