The Vice President vindicates the 1st October referendum three years afterwards, and calls all to “defend self-determination”

The Catalan government VP and National Coordinator of Esquerra Republicana Pere Aragonès defends moving forward towards the goal of independence on the broadest of paths: “They [the Spanish state] have built a state based on prosecutors, truncheons and, historically, by the force of arms and war; we will achieve the Catalan Republic with supermajorities, with a democratic surge, that’s how we will win again,” he said firmly in the Catalan city of Girona at a presentation of the book by Oriol Junqueras and Marta Rovira “We will win again (and how will we do it)”.

Mr Aragonés also vindicated the referendum of the 1st of October, three years afterwards, and recalled that on that day “very diverse people defended the ballot boxes and slips because we associated self-determination with the aspirations we have as a society.” And that is because “this country needs the opportunity to generate equal opportunities, and the welfare and prosperity for everyone like the air we breathe.” He called for self-determination: “We have no right to cease defending self-determination. And we will defend it everywhere.”

The party Secretary General Marta Rovira, who is exiled in Geneva, took part in the event online. “The book could be summed up in one sentence,” she said. “There must be many more of us, we must build an unbeatable majority, and prepare much better than in 2017. This will determine when we can come back and consolidate a final victory.” She added that “there are no magic formulae or easy ways to achieve independence; experience shows it is quite the opposite, that we must work, work and work.” She went on to warn the Spanish government that “they must know that if it does not respond to dialogue and negotiation, the great country consensus that we will represent, we will do it again.”

For his part, the Speaker of the Catalan Parliament Roger Torrent emphasized the need to “unite the people in the street and the institutions”: “When people work side by side with those who are responsible for the institutions, that’s when we do our best and we advance; the communion between the people and institutions is fundamental.”

In the same vein, the Minister of Health Alba Vergés compared it to the situation with Covid-19: “The Health Department and the Government can deploy massive resources and budgets, but this alone is not enough. You need people to accompany us in this struggle.” And she also highlighted Mr Junqueras and Ms Rovira’s book as a positive contribution: “We may all agree that we will do it again, but the challenge is to find union in how we will do it again; that’s why this book is so essential. Oriol and Marta have dared to put proposal before the whole country, which may have be improved on, but it’s a start.”