From Urquinaona to Parliament: the Diada demonstration unites the street front with the institutional front

After the parenthesis of last year by the pandemic with reduced and decentralized concentrations, the ANC returns to summon citizens to a massive demonstration for the Diada. And it does so with a centralized march in Barcelona that will leave from Plaça Urquinaona, epicenter of the protests against the sentence of the Catalan independence bid, and will reach the Parliament with the desire to unite the street front with the institutional front. Under the slogan 'Let's fight and win independence', the Assemblea wants to make clear the need for these two fronts to work in a coordinated way, along with the international one, to make self-determination effective in a journey through symbolism. This demonstration will be the prelude to a new march on 1-O to claim the mandate of the referendum and at the same time activate the street to pressure the Government in a context of demobilization. The ANC has presented this double mobilization in the IES Pau Claris, one of the voting points of 1-O that suffered the most police violence.

The President of the organization, Elisenda Paluzie, said that the objective of this double mobilization is to "empower citizens" to push the institutions again in the struggle for independence. At the end of July, the Assemblea will present the events planned to commemorate the four years of 1-O, which Paluzie has defined as "an exemplary exercise of self-determination". Some acts that will last until 3-O and that will be made in all the Països Catalans, with special incidence in Catalunya Nord for its key role in the arrival of the ballot boxes of the referendum to the Principat, and that will also serve to pay tribute to the three thousand reprisals of the Catalan independence bid.

Paluzie has rejected that the release of political prisoners could be a factor that mobilizes fewer people. "No demonstration has focused on repression, we have always put the struggle for independence, the political objective, at the center, and we do not believe that this fact affects," she said. Montse Ortiz, from Òmnium, which also joins the two mobilizations, has called to take to the streets to exercise the right to self-determination. "We must continue to fill the streets to put pressure on the institutions and to denounce that the repression of the State does not stop", said the leader of the organization, which has regretted the judicial processes affecting political leaders and activists. "Pardons are not the solution to anything", she concluded.

Jordi Gaseni, President of the AMI, pointed out the importance of "recovering the spirit of the great Diadas" in reference to the great mobilizations prior to the pandemic. "The spirit of unity must be worked on and the local world will be a key part in achieving this unity", he warned before explaining that they will call on municipalities to join these two mobilizations.