Independence movement takes advantage of the Amposta Diada to denounce territorial grievances

Amposta“The Terres de l’Ebre are not the periphery, but the gravitational center of a people's dignity. On this National Day, we make the cry “I am here, we are here” our own and raise our voices against the cynicism of those who want us pacified and submissive,” proclaimed Núria Pinyes Font, philologist and firefighter, in the final manifesto of the pro-independence mobilization in Amposta. After traveling through the city's main arteries in two columns that moved in parallel, the march ended at six in the evening by the Ebro River, in front of the Hanging Bridge of the capital of Montsià, the great symbolic point of the mobilization. There were 13,000 people according to the organizers and 1,600 according to the police.The capital of Montsià has been one of the three cities this year where the independence movement has called upon protesters (along with Barcelona and Girona), with an explicit commitment to decentralizing the mobilization. The event has brought together citizens, political parties, and civic and social entities from Montsià, Baix Ebre, Terra Alta and Ribera d'Ebre, Camp de Tarragona, the south of the Lleida province, and the north of the Valencian Country. And this has been felt in the streets: jotas and sardanas, gralles and dolçaines, band music and castellers have all mingled there. And precisely with this desire to appeal to the territory and its issues, the final speech of the event served to review some of the old and new projects (some still in an embryonic phase) that, in the opinion of the Catalan National Assembly, represent an aggression against the southern regions of Catalonia. “The wounds left open by the Ascó nuclear power plant and the proximity of the one in Vandellòs; the polluting industry of Ercros in Flix; the water transfer from the Ebro to the Camp de Tarragona; the failed Castor natural gas storage facility; the landfills of Tivissa and Riba-roja d’Ebre; the disastrous agrarian policies that have motivated the progressive abandonment of the countryside by farmers,” read Pinyes. And he further added: “The artificial intelligence gigafactory planned for Móra la Nova; the Plater, the territorial sector plan that organizes the implementation of renewable energies, are a coordinated set of measures that reduce the Terres de l’Ebre to the simple function of water and energy providers. And with economic control becoming increasingly distant.” Thus, the organizers wanted to take advantage of the mobilization to channel the discontent over very concrete issues of the Catalan political framework: “Independence as a response to the problems of the present and as a project for the future.”At the end of the event, the Valencian singer-songwriter Esther Querol performed two songs from her latest album Tot comença which served to also claim the unity of the Catalan language across all territories of the linguistic domain. The mobilization culminated with a drum circle and two human pillars raised by the casteller groups from Tortosa and the Ebre Delta. "It is difficult for us to narrow down the exact number of people who have mobilized, but we have far exceeded the number of protesters from last year's territorial demonstration in Tortosa," explained Jaume Graupera, a member of the Catalan National Assembly in the Ebre region and organizer of the mobilization.