In the midst of the controversy over this Sunday's independence movement march on the Diada, or Catalan National Day, the exiled former president Carles Puigdemont has argued that "if the goal is independence, mobilization is necessary." These were his words this Wednesday in an institutional message filmed for the Diada, a message marked by the Republican Left (ERC) offensive against the demonstration organized by the Catalan National Assembly (ANC). In fact, the references to ERC were continuous: "If the objective is to live with the [current Catalan Statute of Autonomy] as cut down by the Constitutional Court, mobilization is a nuisance".
Puigdemont began his discourse by recalling the Diada of five years ago, "the last one we celebrated in the absence of repression and with an extraordinary political and citizen unity". In other words, since then the unity has been lost. He also recalled that the demonstration on 11th September 2017 was the one prior to the referendum, which is why "we all knew what was at stake". That is why he stressed the importance of mobilization in the streets: "Thanks to mobilization we have done things that politics or institutions alone could never have done." And here, a new jab at ERC: "This was not carrying out anti-politics nor was it going against the parties", referring to the argument that the Republican Left is using for not attending this year's pro-independence demonstration.
In this line, the president in exile insisted on highlighting that "we have never had better politics than when the parties and institutions lend their ears" to the public. "A country can never be stronger than when it prioritizes a common goal over logical and legitimate ideological differences", he added, as if extending his hand to ERC again. Despite everything, the rebukes to the Republicans continued. Just after recalling that Catalonia "continues to be punished [by the Spanish state] with an unsustainable fiscal deficit, a systematic failure to comply with its investments and a generalized contempt for everything that is part of our national identity", he went on to say: "No matter how much we effort we make, no matter how much some people give in and roll out red carpets to them, the Spanish project for Catalonia is only plunder, denial and repression".
This last sentence can be understood as an implicit reference to ERC's insistence on the dialogue table with the Spanish government. For there, the the reference went from implicit to explicit: "There is no future as Catalans in Spain. Five years and no proposal. I repeat it for those who are still asleep in the sleep of dialogue: five years and no proposal." "We will not survive because a Spanish prime minister smiles at us while he sends his hitmen to spy on us and criminalize us. We will survive if they respect us and if we respect ourselves," he said as he called Catalans to attend the pro-independence demonstration this Sunday, September 11th.