The Mayoress of Berga ‘disobeys for independence’ and fails to declare before the judge

Montserrat Venturós, the Mayoress of Berga and member of the CUP, today failed to go before Examining Magistrates’ Court number 1 of Berga where she was summonsed for the presumed electoral offence of failing to remove the ‘estelada’ flag from the balcony of Berga Town Hall in the past elections of 27 September and in the Spanish elections of 20 December. Venturós arrived at the doors to the court building, but once there she explained to the press and the tens of people and representatives of civil society who had gathered there that she did not intend to go in. ‘Today I will not be declaring, I will disobey for independence, out of coherence with the right to disobey which is the tool that the CUP has chosen to defend the civil and social rights of the independentists against the attack of the Spanish courts. I will disobey fearlessly in order to obey the mandate of the people and not of the Spanish centralist courts,’ she said.

The Mayoress, together with representatives of the Catalan National Assembly, Òmnium Cultural, Súmate, councillors of other political groups on Berga Council, and councillors and mayors of the CUP from councils called by the Spanish Audience, have made a call to Catalan civil society to support the elected representatives who decide to disobey, regardless of whether each independentist party recommends its elected members to do so.

Venturós also said that although this time she had been summonsed for not having taken down the ‘estelada’ from the Town Hall balcony, Berga Council had last week been summonsed for having approved the motion in support of the 9-N declaration, which ‘must mean something if they are so frightened by it’, she smiled.
On Sunday, in pink t-shirts and with the motto of ‘sense por’, or ‘fearless in English, the CUP called a demonstration for the 7th of May as part of a campaign open to all political groups and organisations of civil society in support of the elected representatives and institutions investigated as independentist by the Spanish courts.