This new legislature in the Parliament of Catalonia has begun without a candidate for the investiture, but also with three empty seats in the chamber. It is the third consecutive Catalan legislature in which there are MPs elected at the polls who cannot take their seats in the Catalan chamber because they are in exile. In this case, they correspond to Carles Puigdemont, Lluís Puig and Ruben Wagensberg. On the seats that should be occupied by the first two of these deputies, from Together for Catalonia (Junts), their colleagues placed the symbolic yellow ribbon that in recent years has served as a visual cue demanding the freedom of Catalan political prisoners and also of those in exile. In the seat of Republican Left (ERC) member Wagensberg, however, a different item was manifested: specifically, a t-shirt that the leader of the ERC parliamentary group, Josep Maria Jové, placed there at the beginning of the plenary, bearing the slogan "Xàtiva renaix de les cendres" ("Xàtiva is reborn from the ashes") which has a long history and a powerful symbolic charge behind it.
To go back to the beginning, you have to go back to 2012. The first person to wear the t-shirt referencing the Valencian Country town of Xàtiva was the ex-leader of the CUP, David Fernàndez, in the first and last parliamentary sessions of that legislature in which the radical-left pro-independence party entered the Parliament of Catalonia for the first time. Fernández, who constantly used his t-shirts to send political messages, left his seat in Parliament after the 2015 elections and the leadership of the CUP fell into the hands of Anna Gabriel, but not this item of clothing. Although it took months of negotiations and the forced stepping-down of Artur Mas for the CUP to agree to invest a president of the Junts pel Sí (Together for Yes) unity list, the heir to the piece of clothing was one of the Junts pel Sí deputies: the one who has just become president of the Catalan National Assembly (ANC), Lluís Llach. In keeping with the tradition, Llach, who was head of the unity list for the Girona constituency wore it in the first plenary session of the legislature.
Fernández, Llach, Wagensberg, Sabater and Wagensberg again
In turn, Llach gave it to Ruben Wagensberg after the December 2017 elections. ERC had signed this pro-independence activist for its list for the Catalan election held following the application of Article 155 and it was he himself who wrote a message expressing his pride in being able to wear it in January 2018: "At a time when it probably has more symbolism than ever, it has been an honour to wear the shirt that David Fernàndez first wore, which then passed to Lluís Llach for his first parliamenary plenary and which he passed to me today. I will try to 'sweat' it with the same dignity as you did!", he wrote on social media at the time in a tweet accompanied by photos of his predecessors wearing it. The slogan of Xàtiva rising from the ashes, a reference to the spirit that allowed the Valencian town to maintain its integrity and rise again after its destruction by the Castilian monarch Felipe V in the 18th century, was especially relevant in January 2018 when the Mariano Rajoy government had itself taken direct control of Catalonia from Madrid, under the constitutional powers of Article 155.
En un moment en que segurament té més simbolisme que mai, ha estat un honor portar la samarreta de l’estrena d’@HiginiaRoig, que després va passar a @lluis_llach pel seu primer ple, i que ell m’ha passat avui.
— Ruben Wagensberg (@wagensberg) January 17, 2018
Intentaré suar-la amb la mateixa dignitat que ho vau fer vosaltres! pic.twitter.com/jWNJYfZeQV
Wagensberg, unlike Fernández and Llach, repeated as an MP, but maintaining the tradition, he passed on the shirt to a deputy from another parliamentary group. On that occasion, the chosen one was Dolors Sabater, representative of the CUP, who, naturally, maintained the tradition and wore the t-shirt to open the legislature.
"Anti-repressive solidarity"
On June 10th this year, when Parliament met to elect a new speaker, many looked for the t-shirt with the Xàtiva slogan, but it was nowhere in the Catalan chamber. Today, though, it reappeared in the place of Wagensberg, exiled in Switzerland and who last week received a visit from new speaker Josep Rull in Geneva. One of the priorities of the new speaker of the chamber, as he made clear, is to ensure the rights of the Catalan deputies who are still in exile.
Before the start of this Wednesday's plenary session, which served to start the two-month countdown in which either a president must be chosen or a repeat election called, Sabater stated on social media that the "thread" - in both literal and metaphorical senses - of this shirt that has reflected the unity of the Catalan independence movement "is not broken either by repression or forced exile". Thus, the Badalona politician chose to return it to Wagensberg "as a gesture of anti-repressive solidarity and to denounce a new legislature marked by the obsession against the independence movement".
Aurora Picornell and the Mallorca's "Roses of Molinar", also present
The spirit of Xàtiva was not the only powerful symbol of solidarity across the Catalan-speaking lands on display in Parliament today. Two weeks after the spectacle of the speaker of the Balearic Parliament, Gabriel Le Senne (Vox), tearing up a photograph of Aurora Picornell during a plenary session, the Parliament of Catalonia responded to the far-right gesture with deputies from different parties (Junts, ERC, the Comuns and the CUP) displaying images of Picornell and the rest of ses roges des Molinar - "the roses of Molinar" - five communist union leaders, all women, shot during the Spanish Civil War in the Mallorcan capital, Palma, and who became icons of anti-Francoism. With regard to the Le Senne incident, the Spanish government has reported the Balearic speaker to prosecutors for a possible hate crime.
