September 11th 2012: Everybody to Barcelona!

Last Sunday, July 15, while I was participating in the pro-independence March at Martorell, I was thinking about the recent history of secessionism at Baix Llobregat.

It is often said that the Catalan National Assembly (ANC) emerged directly from the popular votes on independence held all through Catalonia from 2009 to 2011. Perhaps this is true when we refer strictly to the ANC. However, it's not so clear it is true when we refer to secessionism in general. 

We, the pro-independence folks at Baix Llobregat, have gone a long way. We come from a time when being pro-independence was extremely complicated and difficult, not to say dangerous. The pro-independence movement at  Baix Llobregat was not born from the popular votes, rather it became strengthened by them.

Because of this, as we approached Pont del Diable (Devil's Bridge) and I beheld the great display of estelades (starred Catalan flags), I remembered those who have always felt this way, both at Baix Llobregat and everywhere else. I could not help thinking about the 80's, when pro-independence activists were being indiscriminately detained, especially those who belonged to IPC (a pro-independence party), and, even more recently, those detained in 1992, the year of the Barcelona Olympics, which witnessed the infamous “Garzón operation.”

However, those times are behind us now—the times when they could detain you for carrying a pro-independence sign. Nowadays there are millions of us all over the country who declare themselves openly in favor of breaking up with Spain, the very country that has been smothering us for the past 300 years, and which treats us as a colony of theirs, and does the only thing they know how to do: milk us of our resources.

Everywhere you look people are saying the same: enough is enough! Our patience is over, we have grown up from all these hardships, and the time has come to make crucial decisions and advance resolutely towards our own state. On June 30, 2012, we began to march from Lleida towards independence. The whole country is marching now, and nobody is going to stop us until we achieve our ultimate goal. We want Catalonia to be the next free state in Europe!

Now is the time to focus all our energies on one date and place. September 11th—Barcelona!

Jaume Marfany
Member of the Catalan National Assembly Executive Committee