The Crida Nacional per la República (National Call for the Republic), promoted by Carles Puigdemont, has now been formally registered as a political party with the Spanish interior ministry.
Its official abbreviation will be CNxR, and its listed legal representatives are Ferran Mascarell, Gemma Geis, Saloua Laouaji and Ramon Maria Piqué Fernández. The first three are or have been members of the Catalan Parliament, whilst Mascarell is the current representative of the Catalan government in Madrid.
Initially, rhetoric from within the Call had avoided the label of political party, talking instead of a movement to realise the Catalan Republic. This status, however, will allow it to stand in elections independently.
Indeed, the question of it becoming a party was one of the questions which has sparked the most suspicion from PDeCAT, Puigdemont's party. PDeCAT leadership worries that it will be, in time, absorbed into the new Call.
The party's president, David Bonvehí, has repeatedly and publicly expressed reticence on the matter. In fact, the commission studying the relationship between the two, which meets weekly at Lledoners, has not yet managed to reach an agreement.
From its beginning, the Call has insisted it wishes to be a uniting, cross-spectrum platform to fight elections and to be dissolved once the objective of the republic is achieved.
It will hold its foundational congress on 26th January. In mid November, they opened headquarters in Barcelona, just metres from the Spanish government's delegation to Catalonia.