A year after the Catalan referendum, the independence movement has this Monday directly called on Quim Torra's government to clarify how it intends to enact the result of that vote and implement the republic. The warnings were constant throughout the day. But they spilled over with this evening's demonstration in the streets of Barcelona towards the Parliament building where the call was for them to implement the republic or resign.
Torra and the Parliament's speaker, Roger Torrent, had to stoically listen to shouts of protest from those at the rally. From 7pm onwards, people were gathering there holding posters calling for the interior minister, Miquel Buch, to resign and for the Catalan government to disobey.
When the speeches started on the stage set up in front of the Catalan chamber, the demands on the government crept into them too. "Our votes aren't a blank cheque", was the warning in one of the speeches calling on the Catalan government to stop its submission to the Spanish state. "Or resign", was the other option they were given.
There weren't any speeches from politicians, but from eleven members of the public entrusted with reading some of the petitions that have been collected in ballot boxes around Catalonia in recent weeks.
One of the speeches, by a representative of one of the Committees for Defence of the Republic (CDR), even digressed from the agreed-upon script to call for Buch to resign. "We cannot continue waiting as if it hadn't happened", they said before calling for Buch's resignation following the Catalan police's actions this Saturday.
The ceremony, between shouts and protests, ended with demonstrators in front of the very doors of the Parliament, confronting police, pushing to enter.
The criticisms of the government, however, had started early in the mornings with shouts like "the people decide, the government obeys" and "enough autonomisme", the current model of autonomous communities within Spain. Those were the greetings for the government at Sant Julià de Ramis. Then there were the warnings from the president of the ANC, Elisenda Paluzie, who called for a pro-independence government with "initiative and authority". The final call came with the night and the last of the day's demonstrations in Barcelona.
In Sant Julià, the government heard a forceful CDR manifesto. "Our horizon is the Catalan republic and we won't settle for less", they warned, before calling for civil disobedience and a collective strategy because the "people isn't retreating".
The calls from the committees went without response: none of the later speeches, including the one Torra gave after the lunchtime cabinet meeting, held any news about the government's plans to realise the republic. The closest thing was Torra's admission that the CDR put the pressure on the government, and that they're right to do so.
At that time, students were already marching through the streets of Barcelona under the slogans "neither forgotten, nor forgiven" and "let's construct the republic". And the chant which took off in the run-up to the referendum: "the streets will always be ours".
The students haven't received an answer either. Not even when Torra went out to speak to them in plaça Sant Jaume, before being bid farewell with shouts of "president". And the odd shout of "resign".