For ten years, the pro-independence movement has mourned the loss of Muriel Casals, the economist and activist who, as head of Òmnium Cultural, became one of the symbols of the independence process. Casals did not live to see the October 1st referendum because died more than a year earlier He died in an accident while riding a bicycle, but his leadership was key in the events that preceded it, from the November 9th referendum to the Junts pel Sí list, of which he was a member. Coinciding with the 10th anniversary of his death, his legacy was celebrated this Tuesday in a tribute organized by the organization he led between 2010 and 2015. The event was attended by the activist's family and numerous politicians, including the Speaker of the Catalan Parliament, Josep Rull, former presidents Quim Torra and Juli Fernàndez (ERC deputy), and the president of the Catalan National Assembly (ANC), Lluís Llach. "He was able to see further," said the president of the pro-independence organization, Xavier Antich, who emphasized "the importance of hope," as Casals conveyed, even now "at a time when everything seems to point to the opposite." "Muriel taught us that the only future we have as a people is the one we are capable of building together, based on the diversity that unites us," she declared.

There has been no agreement, and ultimately there will be two demonstrations over the commuter rail chaos. The Catalan National Assembly (ANC) accuses the Network of Train Users' Platforms of Catalonia of staging a counter-protest with an alternative march, but the coordinating body downplays the fact that both demonstrations are on the same day and believes that it, not the pro-independence movement, should lead the mobilization. "We told them we were open to collaborating and supporting their demonstration as long as they didn't call for it on the same day," denounced ANC President Lluís Llach on Friday.

Òmnium Cultural, the ANC and Irídia move to annul the agreement the amnesty granted to the 46 national police officers prosecuted for the violence against the voters of the 1-O referendum in Barcelona. The organizations announced this Thursday the filing of several appeals before the Supreme Court to withdraw the pardon for the officers, which was upheld by Barcelona's 7th Court and later confirmed by the Barcelona Court of Appeals. The filings before the high court accuse the police officers of torture and inhuman and degrading treatment and emphasize that these are crimes that cannot be protected under the amnesty law.

Jordi Cuixart's announcement, with which he ends his presidency at the head of Òmnium is an quite explicit gesture about the need to renew the political leadership of the independence movement. In fact, Cuixart himself had already hinted months ago, in an interview in this newspaper, that it was high time to think seriously about name changes. In the end it has been he who decided to step aside and thus set an example. It is never easy to accept that oneself is not indispensable. And even more so in the case of a president who has made the entity grow spectacularly in number of members (when he took office there were 55,000; now there are 190,000) and who, in the midst of the post-referendum defeat of 2017, has managed to preserve it in a field of constructive neutrality within the serious fracture that weighs down sovereigntism, which is incapable of reformulating a shared strategy for the future.

Shake-up at the head of the independence movement. Jordi Cuixart, president of Òmnium Cultural and one of the great symbols of the movement, announced this Friday that he is leaving the presidency of the organisation and will be relieved by philosopher Xavier Antich, current member of the board. "It is time to stand down no one is indispensable," he said on RAC 1, where he revealed that the vice president of the organisation, Marcel Mauri, will also leave office. Cuixart has been president of Òmnium since December 19, 2015, and has decided not to run for re-election for a third four-year term because he considers that "new leadership is needed" and that "we must leave room for it to emerge." From this Friday, when the general assembly has been convened to choose the new board on February 26, Cuixart will be the acting president after more than six years in office, and having held it while imprisoned over the 2017 referendum. Thus, as he has always defended, it is not the State who decides who leads the organisation.

Despite internal divisions, despite disorientation and disappointment, despite the harshness of covid, the independence movement has denied in this 2021 Catalonia Day the worst predictions and has once again shown its strength on the streets, with thousands of citizens demonstrating in the centre of Barcelona. The historic events of the Catalan independence bid are far away, but it is also clear that the popular strength of the movement continues to exist and that the civil leadership shared by Òmnium and the Assamblea Nacional Catalana (ANC) maintains its capacity to mobilise.

The Catalan National Assembly (ANC) has been claiming for days attendance numbers at the Catalonia Day demonstration it is organising alongside Òmnium is beating the expectations. In fact, this has already led to changes in the route of the protest. Instead of ending in Ciutadella Park, it will do so at Estació de França, to avoid crowds at the entrances to the park. Until now, the entity had not made any data public; today, ANC president Elisenda Paluzie said attendance is expected to reach six digits. That is, at least 100,000 people. This would be significantly higher than last year, when the ANC said 60,000 people took part in different events spread throughout the country. Nevertheless, it would be a far cry from the 600,000 people of 2019 or the one million of 2018, according to the Guardia Urbana. One of the indicators that allow them to be optimistic this year is that buses will leave from over 100 municipalities.

After the cold reunion between Carles Puigdemont and Oriol Junqueras on July 7 in the House of the Republic almost four years after the 2017 Referendum, this Friday the president and the vice president of the Government that led the 2017 Referendum have met again in the celebration of 60 years of Òmnium in Elna, in North Catalonia. The organisation wanted to symbolise the reunion of freed prisoners and exiles with the will to turn the page on the discrepancies in the bosom of the pro-independence movement and work out a joint strategy to prepare for the new onslaught with the State. The estrangement between Puigdemont and Junqueras, however, has become evident again with few signs of cordiality between the two.

The civil society validates the Government's proposal to create a fund to respond to the bonds of the Court of Auditors, but does not want to stay with its arms crossed in case the court ends up knocking it down. For this reason, Pep Cruanyes, president of the Caixa de Solidaritat, has launched an appeal to the citizenship to make donations for the bonds imposed by the external action of the Generalitat. He also announced that today they have asked court number 13 to return the 4 million they paid in duplicate to this court and to the Court of Auditors for 1-O. "We ask the citizenship for an economic effort to respond to this new onslaught and at the same time we will do the impossible to recover the four million that we consigned to the two judicial bodies"; said the maximum representative of the Caixa in a press conference at the Ateneu Barcelonès. Cruanyes has denounced "the delirious action" of the Court of Auditors for the external action and has remembered the particular vote of one of its members against the cause.

The violation of the right to demonstrate, of the right to be heard in court predetermined by law, to a fair trial and to an effective defence, and also of the principle of legality and the prohibition of arbitrary detention. These are some of the arguments that form the appeal that Jordi Cuixart presented last week to the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) against the sentencing of the Catalan independence bid trials. The main objective of the document, however, is to turn his case into a European case against the "abusive limitation" of fundamental rights, as explained at a press conference by Olivier Peter, one of the lawyers of the President of Òmnium. He explained that the main argument to make in Strasbourg is that the sentence of nine years in prison for sedition violates Article 18 of the European Convention on Human Rights, relating to restrictions on rights and freedoms. "The right to protest cannot be limited by political will", he said, convinced that the aim of the repression in Cuixart was not to "apply the law" but to "take it away from the street" and "weaken" the role of the sovereigntist entity in the defence of the right to self-determination.

On newsstands around the world this Tuesday the following headline could be read: "Separatists a Headache for Spain, Even From Jail". It is the front page of the New York Times, which dedicates one of the six main news items of the day to the president of Òmnium, Jordi Cuixart. On the inside pages, the three-paragraph box on the front page becomes an extensive interview with Cuixart in Lledoners prison. The headline asks: "Criminal or martyr? Prisoner Poses a Political Dilemma for Spain". And, in fact, Cuixart does not stop wondering aloud questions that can give an answer to his future: "At some point, Spain will have to ask itself: what do they want to do with me? Eliminate me? They can't," he concludes. Thus ends a report that reviews Cuixart's origins as well as the evolution of the Independence bid.

Two months after February 14 and still without agreement between the pro-independence parties, Òmnium Cultural (a Catalan pro-sovereignty organisation) has raised its finger this Saturday to demand that the result of more than 50% of pro-independence votes of February 14 not be "squandered" and that the "institutional impasse" be resolved. According to the entity, a shared strategy is needed to "culminate self-determination", since it considers that after the past legislature marked by repression a new stage must be opened. "We need a common front", said the vice president of Òmnium, Marcel Mauri, who along with the vice president, Clàudia Pujol, has read a series of actions that the organization believes have to collect the Catalan institutions. "It is necessary to recover the political and institutional initiative. To get out of this institutional impasse. We must chart a clear, broad and shared path that leads us towards the achievement of the Catalan Republic", concludes Òmnium.

Amnesty International continues to denounce that the secretary general of Junts and former leader of the Assemblea, Jordi Sànchez, and the president of Òmnium, Jordi Cuixart, are deprived of their freedom three years and five months after their imprisonment. This time the organisation has highlighted their situation in the annual report on human rights in the world. In the section on Spain, Amnesty warns that Sànchez and Cuixart "were still in prison" at the end of 2020 after being found guilty "of sedition in connection with the 2017 demonstrations and independence referendum." Without going into assessments, the organisation recalls the situation of the leaders of the sovereignist entities in the section that deals with freedom of expression and assembly in the Spanish state.