The Arran manual for boycotting Aliança Catalana and Vox stops
The youth of the pro-independence left urge to throw eggs at them or steal their material
BarcelonaThe Arran of Les Corts branch claimed last January the destruction of an Aliança Catalana tent in Plaça Comas, Barcelona. During the attack, a far-right party militant fell to the ground from a push by an independentist left-wing member and was evacuated to Sagrat Cor Hospital with a severe head injury. The Mossos would arrest three people a couple of months later who are awaiting trial.
Despite the judicialization of the case, Arran, the youth organization of the independentist left, maintains a frontal and active opposition against Aliança, but also against Vox, because they consider them far-right formations, which have racist positions contrary to the rights of the working class. In this crusade, Arran calls to combat their presence in institutions and in the streets.
Now it has taken a step further and published a manual in which it urges to boycott with direct action the stalls that Vox, but especially Aliança Catalana, organizes every weekend in different cities and towns with an eye on the upcoming municipal elections. The booklet, titled Països Catalans, terra de tothom, contains practical examples to prevent these two far-right parties from carrying out their events normally.
Thus, the youth of the independentist left propose some concrete actions. Some of these advocate for direct confrontation with "a parallel call to boycott the event". Here the range of actions is varied and Arran advocates throwing eggs or paint, setting up loudspeakers with very loud music or sounding an alarm to prevent them from speaking or making speeches.
They also urge to engage in close combat with their sympathizers with "a scavenger hunt of challenges to see who can take more things from them". In this last point, Arran proposes burning the confiscated material in a barrel to celebrate a sui generis "castanyada" (chestnut festival). "Don't leave for tomorrow the pamphlets you can burn today", it says in the booklet.
Other proposals, on the other hand, are low-intensity actions such as hanging banners, signaling with signs that say "Danger, fascists" in places where these parties want to hold their events, or sealing off the area, the night before or the same day, with a similar slogan. They also put on the table a more "performative" action, such as fumigating the space where the event was held the following day, as had already been done at the time with the visits made by the leader of Ciudadanos, Inés Arrimadas, in some sovereigntist strongholds. "We cannot normalize in any situation their presence, their speeches, or their acceptance," concludes Arran to justify all these actions.
