While the pro-independence parties do not stop arguing about everything and anything, their citizen base repeatedly stars in situations that could well appear in the Guinness records. This Thursday, Caixa de Solidaritat [an association for donations towards the victims of political repression from the Spanish state in Catalonia] announced that it had paid the two million that were still missing from the fine imposed unexpectedly by the Court of Auditors for the 9th November 2014 participatory consultation which amounted to €4,988,620.11. A clearly arbitrary decision which requires them to pay for the purchase of computers that have always been owned by the Catalan government and that are still used in schools! An arbitrary decision by an administrative body -full of politicians from the PP and the PSOE- with kinship ties that reach 100 employees.
With the payment of this fine, the seizure of defendants' property and real objective behind the new strategy designed to frighten the pro-independence movement, will be avoided. A strategy that aims to go beyond the 1st October 2017 referendum prison and disqualification from office: high amounts of fines to ruin pro-independence leaders as a coercive formula which is equally or more effective than those that the State has used to date to repress the pro-sovereignty movement.
The Caixa de Solidaritat also paid the remainder of the €5.8 million -some €700,000- to lift the bailed imposed on those investigated by Barcelona Court no. 13. Besides these high amounts, there is also the aid that has been provided to more than 140 individuals likewise considered persecuted by the State.
Yet another example of citizen awareness and the extensive citizenship base that supports independence. The high level of this ongoing repression will require new economic aid in the near future. Perhaps the parties will continue to engage in endless discussion, but the more than two million voters of the 1st October referendum seem willing to show there is no stop, if left to them.