When we embarked on the adventure of ElNacional.cat, my first article for those who from that moment on would be my new, dear readers had the title "New times, new challenges. Are you coming with us?" (link in Catalan). The newspaper was born as an exciting journalistic adventure which aspired to accompany Catalan society in the transformation that was taking place and which beat ever more strongly in its heart. A change of direction which would allow it to go from the path of an autonomous community to independence if that was the desire of the majority of its citizens. In these current times, sometimes uneasy and sometimes hopeful, in the middle of a trial in the Supreme Court as absurd as it is unjust, seeking above all to punish the independence movement, we've celebrated our third anniversary.
We're still a very young newspaper and we have a lot to learn but the speed of events has forced us to mature quickly. From that month of March 2016 when we started our voyage there have been two presidents of Catalonia, an independence referendum which the state didn't accept and repressed, a declaration of independence by the Parliament which the government hasn't fulfilled, the suppression of Catalan autonomy for months through article 155 of the Spanish Constitution, the firing of the Catalan government by decree of the Spanish government, the imprisonment of part of the Catalan executive, the Parliament's speaker and the leaders of Òmnium and the ANC, and the exile of president Puigdemont and the other non-imprisoned ministers. We've responded to everything that's happened as best as we've known how to, always defending Catalonia's institutions and their representatives as elected by her people.
We've tried to transform the changes in Catalan society into informational energy to respond to the questions, the doubts of a plural society. Three years after that beginning, we can be moderately proud. We've finished the month of March having pulverised the newspaper's records both in terms of unique users (4,579,763), as in visits (18,802,813) and page visits (53,460,828). They are our best results from our short history both in terms of visits and page visits, they were only beaten in unique users in October 2017, with the independence referendum and the declaration of independence, weeks which are engraved in all our memories.
ElNacional.cat has since July 2017 had an uninterrupted solid lead in Spain among all online Catalan newspapers according to ComScore, the measure used by the largest advertising firms; in unique users, it's doubled Ara and Nació Digital. In OJD too, ElNacional.cat's leadership in Spain among online Catalan media has been continuous since October 2017. We are, as such, legitimately satisfied with the work we've done.
There are many of you who follow us every day, but we need to be more, much more, to build between all of us the great online alternative newspaper for Catalonia, able to report with no debts beyond those to its own readers. And to stand up with truth as its standard in the face of the wave of repression unleashed by the state and the rolling back and loss of rights and liberties (including freedom of expression and information, among others) - individual and national rights and liberties.