The document released on Saturday from Waterloo, Belgium, by the Catalan exile body Council for the Republic, which Carles Puigdemont presides over and Toni Comín coordinates, and in which all the pro-independence political groups are present, except the CUP (although one of the CUP's constituent groups, Poble Lliure, is represented), as well as the civil group ANC, but not Òmnium, is a wake-up call to the Catalan institutions, who it urges "to prepare the measures and actions necessary to put into effect the popular mandate for independence". The Council offers dialogue to the Spanish state and even proposes "a negotiating platform for the resolution of the conflict" based on the recognition of the right to self-determination exercised at the 2017 referendum, the reversal of the current repression and an independent mediation of the negotiations.
Given that the state is not going to take even a single step to establish a dialogue such as that proposed by the Council for the Republic, and the Council's leaders know this well enough, it is clear that part of the message is aimed more at internal Catalan consumption and that it is trying to inject some revitalising energy - currently rather low - into the Catalan institutions in the lead-up to the second anniversary of the referendum of 1st October 2017 and the imminent Supreme Court verdicts on the Catalan political prisoners. As well, it provides them with a compass to navigate the current paralysis which is due in part to the state's repression, the lack of leadership and the inability to cement any agreements that might go beyond a repeat of situations already experienced in October 2017, such as Catalonia's 'national stoppage' on 3rd October of that year.
The Council ratifies its mission of putting into effect the mandate received from the 2017 referendum and calls on the people of Catalonia to "mobilize to support the action of the Catalan institutions" as well as to carry out "civil disobedience when necessary ", in line with the ideas that Òmnium Cultural and its president, Jordi Cuixart, have been backing for some time. Regarding future Catalan elections, it asserts that "as long as the mandate of 1st October has not been put into effect, these will have the character of a referendum".
After this forceful positioning, we'll have to see how much of what is proposed ends up being taken on board by the Catalan institutions, whose parties are represented in the Council, run the Catalan government and signed the document. This is the million-euro question.