Five years after the day when television viewers around the world saw Spanish police bashing their way into Catalan primary schools to stop voters taking part in Catalonia's independence referendum, the mobilization called to "defend October 1st and win independence" plans to return to those same schools. The Council for the Catalan Republic, which last week unveiled plans to mark the fifth anniversary of the October 1st referendum with a rally at the Arc de Triomf in Barcelona, has now announced further details. Antoni Castellà, head of institutional relations for the exile-based pro-independence organization, has told the Efe agency that, one day before the major rally, there will also be public mobilizations in schools where police used violence to remove the ballot boxes.
The plan is to recall the actions of those people who, on the eve of October 1st, 2017, flocked to occupy schools that were designated as voting stations, to ensure they would be open the following day. For this reason, the public will be invited to gather on the night of Friday 30th September this year in those centres where "there was police violence". This night-time occupation of schools will be a "preliminary" to the unitary political event that the independence movement will celebrate the following day on the occasion of the fifth anniversary of the day known to Catalans as the 1-O. "We want to make it very clear that we won on October 1st and that, therefore, this victory still stands", Castellà remarked, affirming that the Council intends to claim that the referendum result "stands" and "remains valid".
A call for unity
Not only was October 1st a victory, Castellà underlined, but the key to it was unity. The pro-independence forces "won because for the first time institutions, political parties, organized civil society and citizens acted together", he affirmed, adding: "This is the formula for success". A formula that the Council wants to implement in its unitary act, inviting representatives of the Catalan National Assembly (ANC), Òmnium Cultural, the Association of Municipalities for Independence (AMI), the Intersindical-CSC trade union and the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce to take part. Also taking part, electronically and in his role as president of the Council for the Republic, Carles Puigdemont.
"This 1st October cannot be limited to just being a reclamation of what happened five years ago, it must also be an act of reaffirmation, because that result legitimizes us politically. This 1-O must mark a point of inflection, it must be the start of a new phase", stressed Castellà, who hopes that it will be a massive event at which "associations, citizens, political parties and, why not, government institutions will join hands again". The Council for the Republic representative commented that all those citizens who "that day decided to exercise their right to vote, even those who voted 'no' to independence" should feel themselves called to join this year's actions, because it was a "victory for self-determination".