Súmate: ‘We are the living proof that in Catalonia, there is no division. We will forge a new country.’

The Súmate group (Twitter and Facebook) introduced itself yesterday in Barcelona in a moving event in the packed CCOO auditorium and with the attendance of an important number of Catalan personalities: Xavier Sala-i-Martín, Miquel Calçada, Muriel Casals, Carme Forcadell, Josep Maria Vila d’Abadal, Francesc Marc Álvaro and Lluís Cabrera, among others. ‘We are the living proof that in Catalonia there is no division. We will forge a new country,’ said the association’s president, Eduardo Reyes, who added, ‘as Spanish as we feel, we have the obligation of defending the land where we are now’. The event, in addition, was attended by two former members of the People’s Party and UPyD, Carlos Treviño and Manolo Ortega, respectively.

Ortega who said that he had voted and been a member at the side of UPyD leader Rosa Díez, made Súmate’s message very clear, ‘The ones who are dividing us are those that say that to be Spanish means you can’t be Catalan, the ones who are dividing us are the ones who don’t let us vote.’ And with respect to his former party, he added, ‘I thought that it was a center-left, federalist party, but they said in order to be Spanish I had to stop being Catalan.’

Treviño, for his part, said that he ‘had been indoctrinated by the COPE [radio station]’ and that he had voted for [former Spanish president and PP leader José Maria] Aznar. And he pointed out that he felt mistreated by Spain. ‘The Spanish government have acted like scoundrels with us,’ he said, while he applauded the Catalan character and appreciated the tolerance toward people like him who ‘are people who maintain their Spanish culture and who feel appreciated and who receive your support’.

Another speaker was José Rodríguez, who said he had been a member of the Catalan Socialists’ Party and the union, UGT. He said that he was in favor of independence because it had been made clear to him that reforming Spain was impossible. ‘It’s like trying to climb Everest by kicking your feet.’ In the end, he harshly criticized Spanish fear-mongering, and commented that ‘at this rate, they’ll end up telling us we’ll be expelled from the galaxy’.