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, a 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 ran 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 this year one of the three cities where the independence movement has summoned protesters (along with Barcelona and Girona), with an explicit commitment to decentralizing the mobilization. The event has brought together citizens, political parties, civic and social entities from Montsià, Baix Ebre, Terra Alta and Ribera d'Ebre, Camp de Tarragona, the south of the Lleida area and the north of the Valencian Country. And this has been noticeable in the streets: jotas and sardanas, gralles and dolçaines, band music and castellers have all mingled there. And precisely with this will to appeal to the territory and its problems, the final speech of the event has 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 for 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 diversion of the Ebro river to the Camp de Tarragona; the failed Castor natural gas storage facility; the landfills of Tivissa and Riba-roja d’Ebre; the disastrous agricultural policies that have caused the progressive abandonment of the countryside by farmers”, read Pinyes. And he added: “The artificial intelligence gigafactory projected for Mora la Nova; the Plater, the territorial sectoral plan that organizes the implementation of renewable energies, are a coordinated set of measures that relegate 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 unrest over very specific 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 vindicate the unity of the Catalan language across all territories of the linguistic domain. The mobilization culminated with a batucada and with two pillars raised by the casteller groups from Tortosa and the Ebro 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 at the territorial demonstration in Tortosa,” explained Jaume Graupera, member of the Catalan National Assembly in the Ebro and organizer of the mobilization.