Puigneró: "As long as Catalonia is not independent, I will always attend the Catalonia Day march"

Puigdemont vindicates the 2017 march, held weeks before the independence referendum

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Alsina, Puigdemont and Puigneró at today's event in Brussels. ACN / Albert Cadanet

BrusselsThere are only a few days left before Catalonia Day, yet the build-up continues with more statements on Sunday's march. No ERC minister will attend, but JxCat's will, as vice-president Jordi Puigneró and Foreign Affairs minister Victòria Alsina explained yesterday in Brussels, accompanied by former Catalan president and Junts MEP Carles Puigdemont. "As long as there are exiles, reprisals, fiscal plundering, recentralisation and Catalonia is not independent, I will always attend the Catalonia Day march," Puigneró remarked in statements to the media.

Asked about the fact that his coalition partners have already said that they will not take part, he has avoided assessing the situation and nor making any kind of reproach. Puigdemont has also dodged the controversy, who has claimed the Diada as a reminder of what "the Catalans are, where they come from and what kind of people" they have "always in front of them". "And a warning, we will continue to remember it," he has warned.

Puigdemont has also linked the Ukrainian war with the conflicts between Catalonia and Spain throughout history and, specifically, with the War of Succession and the Nueva Planta Decrees enacted by the Bourbon king Philip V. "Those were our enemies and they are our enemies. The Ukrainians know it, since also [Russia] wants to destroy the Ukrainian nation," the MEP said, who recalled that five years ago a totally different Catalonia Day was being prepared. "We decided that we wanted to live in freedom," he said.

FThe Foreign minister Victoria Alsina also took part in the event, which was held in the heart of the European quarter of Brussels, and praised Casimir de Dalmau, the curator of the exhibition Catalonia with Europe: 1982-2022 –which collects historical images and a large amount of former president of the Generalitat Jordi Pujol- and remarked that the repression of the Spanish state against Catalonia "is an internal matter, but an internal European matter".