Catalan group Òmnium Cultural has held what it calls a Botifarrada Suprema in Barcelona's Poblenou district this Saturday. In English, that might be a "Sausage Sizzle Supreme", and as well as a highly social event, it's intended as an ironic political protest against those who "want to put limits on Catalans' way of being and exercise of their freedom of expression, right to protest and right to self-determination".
Vice president of the pro-independence cultural organization, Marcel Mauri, explained that the event is a reaction to the moment during the current Supreme Court trial of pro-independence leaders when the public prosecutor questioned Òmnium leader Jordi Cuixart about his group's organization of such botifarrades. Mauri said that every time a right is put in doubt, they will exercise it even more strongly, and for that reason, Òmnium has announced that this year it plans to hold a thousand similar events, based around the traditional Catalan activity of eating botifarra pork sausages together. The group has also announced that this week its membership total has passed the 160,000 mark.
Si el fiscal considera una botifarrada un acte de rebel·lió o sedició, nosaltres en farem arreu. Avui al Poblenou fem la primera Botifarrada Suprema pic.twitter.com/ybyGkgR0zh
— Òmnium Cultural (@omnium) 9 de març de 2019
Translation:
"If the prosecutor considers a 'botifarrada' as an act of rebellion or sedition, we will do it everywhere. Today in Poblenou we hold the first Botifarrada Suprema"— Òmnium Cultural
Mauri explained that the event is intended to show that the Supreme Court trial of 12 Catalan leaders is based on "lies, emails, tweets, anecdotes", that it limits the right to a defence and persecutes basic freedoms. The vice president of the body also criticized the Spanish government's former delegate in Catalonia, Enric Millo, for "telling lies to the Supreme Court and on social media" which had "turned into an own goal", when he suggested that Cuixart wanted to block the authorities at a protest, key for the trial, on 20th September 2017. This, says Mauri, shows Millo's "low level" in political and human terms.
Mauri did not want to give specific views on the pro-independence parties' candidates for the elections coming up in the spring, saying that they must be the "best" that the parties had found, but he did call on them to maintain "strategic unity" and hoped they would obtain "excellent results" at the polls.
Òmnium's pork sausage extravaganzas, which have begun this Saturday as part of the group's Democracy on Trial campaign, arose after prosecutor Jaime Moreno asked Jordi Cuixart insistently about for the botifarrades which the Òmnium Cultural president had mentioned in an internal email in August 2017. The email anticipated spending 500,000 euros on a publicity campaign against the celebration of Spain's 12th October holiday; although the campaign did not in the end go ahead, it included botifarrades among other actions.
Before the barbecues were fired up, a discussion took place on the violation of fundamental rights featuring Irene Escorihuela, director of the human rights group Observatory DESC, Victòria Molins, a nun working with people at risk of social exclusion and Òmnium deputy leader Mauri, moderated by lawyer Núria Arnau. Subsequently, about 300 people took part in the botifarrada.