05.04.2014 - 21:24
“This year we will find ourselves on the most important streets in the country: on Diagonal and on Gran Via, meeting in the Plaça de les Glòries,” announced Ferran Civit as he described the huge demonstration that the ANC has proposed for next September 11th, Catalonia’s National Day. The idea is that from the sky the huge demonstration will make the V sign for Victory. “A V for Via [Way], Voluntat [Will], and for Victoria [Victory],” proclaimed the ANC. The demonstration will be the centerpiece of Catalonia’s National Day, or Diada, in the afternoon, but the mobilization will already have begun in the morning, with demonstrations in front of every one of the 947 town and city government buildings across Catalonia, where the local authorities will be asked to commit their resources to making the November 9th referendum possible.
“There is no street big enough to hold Catalonia’s soul,” said the historian and member of the national board, Víctor Cucurull, to a quiet, expectant crowd in Tarraco Arena, where the group held its annual general meeting. During the annual meeting, the group unanimously approved the road map to independence.
“We are calling everyone to gather on the morning of September 11th in front of the town and city halls. We’re going to the main squares,” said Cucurull. “We will invite the municipal governments to sign the agreement in support of the convocation that the government will have to make. We will also ask them to give us polling places, ballot boxes, and municipal services in order to hold the referendum,” he added.
The morning of September 11th will also be the final day of collecting signatures for the Sign up to Vote for Independence campaign and all the authorities and local groups will bring the collected votes and the government commitment to the referendum to the Parliament of Catalonia in Barcelona. “Before leaving for Barcelona, we’ll take a picture. To see who is there and who is not,” challenged Cucurull.
After September 11th
The mobilizations, however, will not be over on September 11th because “we have to continue the mobilization until November 9th” in order to win a “resounding Yes-Yes vote”, said Montserrat Rossell, another member of the board. From September 12th to November 7th, the ANC will present daily events from 17:14 (5:14pm) until 20:14 (8:14pm) each evening. 17:14 is a symbolic time since it marks the year Barcelona fell to the Bourbons three hundred years ago.
The announcement of the mobilization on next September 11th was the climax of a long morning in the old Tarragona arena. The more than 7000 attendees at the annual meeting made the walls resound with cries of independence, clearly satisfied that this well-guarded secret had finally been revealed: the proposal for the next Catalan National Day. Òmnium Cultural and the Association of Municipalities for Independence joined the ANC in the meeting, and offered their support for and commitment to make the referendum possible.
