Esquerra will set the nation’s horizon for the next decade at the 2022 National Conference, to be held on the 12th and 13th of March with the rubric “We forge the Republican future.”

Esquerra Republicana is to hold the 2022 National Conference on the 12th and 13th of March at La Farga de l’Hospitalet Conference Centre, under the rubric “We forge the Republican future.” The National Conference will set the party’s political bearing for the next two years and will establish its vision of the nation’s horizon for the coming decade, while setting its sights as far as 2040. The draft National Manifesto which Esquerra has sent to its members is to be debated and voted on at the Conference, thus setting the party’s political, social and national trajectory and placing Catalonia on an “irreversible path” to independence, maintaining that the Catalan Republic is essential in order to benefit the people and to build a better society.”

The draft details the public policy package that is to guide the nation’s governance over the next decade, while providing that independence “is a means to achieve the best tools” to develop those policies, but “not an excuse for not putting them into practice” with the tools available at any given time. “We are clear as to what we want, why we want it, and how and why we want to carry it out,” said Raül Romeva, the Deputy Secretary General for Prospection and Agenda 2030 and the coordinator of the National Conference.

The draft of the National Manifesto points to democratic confrontation at the negotiating table with Spain, accompanied by great national consensus, transverse mobilizations and republican policies as the pillars in the construction of the Catalan Republic. It considers that the best way to resolve the political conflict is through a negotiation process with the Spanish state that will allow ideas to be challenged democratically. It thus contends that the best democratic confrontation is the negotiating table, accompanied by the ability to continue revitalizing an all-encompassing social movement for independence and to strengthen the country’s broad consensus on resolving the conflict: amnesty and a referendum for self-determination. In this regard, Esquerra considers that the commitment to negotiation is essential in order to extend international acknowledgement and complicity for the cause of the Catalan Republic.

Today there is a consolidated majority of Catalan society that wants to decide democratically on the political future of Catalonia. It is a strong, plural, diverse majority that goes beyond the margins of the pro-independence parties

Raül Romeva Deputy Secretary General for Prospection and Agenda 2030

“Today there is a consolidated majority of Catalan society that wants to decide democratically on the political future of Catalonia. It is a strong, plural, diverse majority that goes beyond the margins of the pro-independence parties, to the point that it constitutes one of the great consensuses in the country,” stresses Mr Romeva. The coordinator of the National Manifesto emphasized that we are before a “wide-open opportunity thanks to the stamina of the independence movement and the electoral strength of Esquerra Republicana,” the success of which will largely depend on the capacity of mobilization of the Catalan people in favour of a democratic resolution of the conflict and of union in the defence of that objective.”

While reiterating its commitment to negotiation with Spain, the Manifesto contends that alternatives must continue to be assembled in order to address the democratic onslaught that will lead to the country’s independence if the negotiations do not yield the results sought after. The draft declares that “We shall not forgo any democratic instrument that allows us to decide on our collective future to attain the Catalan Republic, from actions of political and social disobedience, to overwhelming democratic action to make the right to self-determination possible.”


Esquerra will set the nation’s horizon for the next decade

The draft National Manifesto details the policies that Esquerra Republicana will develop over the next decade for the social, green, feminist and democratic transformation of the nation, assuming that the current limitations to competencies must be overcome and that only the achievement of full sovereignty will allow them to be applied to the full. “The model of the Catalan Republic and the country we want for 2040 and beyond is based on a social and economic basis that guarantees the right to subsistence, equal opportunities and shared prosperity,” Mr Romeva concludes.

All in all, the draft presented to the membership includes, by area, the following horizons:

1. In economic policy, the draft means to curb the accumulation of wealth and reverse the trend in poverty and inequality “by at least half” over the next ten years, as well as strengthen the progressive and redistributive nature of the tax system. It also contends that it is necessary to “break the neoliberal mental framework” by promoting municipalization of basic services and public companies to ensure utilities such as electricity, gas and water, as well as democratizing businesses by promoting the social and cooperative economy. All this while guaranteeing a “republican outlook” on property.
2. Strengthening the welfare society and republican policies is another pillar of Esquerra’s package: ensuring access to housing, increasing the public stock, continuing to progress with the regulation of rental prices, reversing cuts in the public health system, and strengthening public education and the Universal Basic Income, which is already beginning to take off with this present parliament. Regarding the environment and the fight against climate change, Esquerra Republicana aims to develop a decarbonized, denuclearized, distributed, democratic, participatory and territorially cohesive energy model.
3. An ambitious public intervention on the cultural front, with the defence and promotion of the Catalan language as a fundamental axis of the republican construct, with a single, public, secular, inclusive and excellence-oriented model of Catalan schooling, is another pillar of the document, which warns that the repeated, constant attacks on the language and culture call for an “urgent, massive, coordinated and uninhibited” response.
4. The Republican horizon outlined in the National Manifesto also calls for the democratization of our institutions. In this regard, it expresses commitment to the eradication of corruption, simplification of institutional architecture, fostering participatory democracy and strengthening institutional representation; likewise democratizing justice and the judiciary to guarantee equal access to the judiciary profession, thus ensuring a diverse and inclusive judicial branch.
5. The draft proposes a feminist transformation for effective equality and to eradicate all gender-based violence. Empowering women by ensuring their access to all areas of decision-making, with equal pay and job security to ensure their economic independence, with shared responsibility for caregiving and the home, and guaranteeing sexual and reproductive rights for motherhood and to decide on their own body.