Catalan Diary
Sunday 12 November 2017 – from anti-fascists in Barcelona
Almost a million demonstrate in Barcelona for political prisoners.
Hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets of Barcelona on Saturday, 11 November to support the imprisoned government of the Catalan Republic and the representatives of the Ómnium Cultural and Catalan National Assembly organisations also imprisoned last month for rebellion and sedition.
The spectacular protest occupied 3.3km of Marina Avenue, one of the city’s major streets. The vice president of Òmnium, Marcel Mauri, warned the state that “neither repression nor imprisonment will stop the will of the independence movement to build the Republic that Parliament declared on October 27. They shall not pass!”.
At the end of the demonstration, relatives of the political prisoners spoke to the crowd to thank it for its support while a helicopter of the Spanish National Police flew noisily at low altitude trying to prevent the speakers being heard.
For his part, the Catalan president in exile, Carles Puigdemont, said on 8 November at a press conference that “Spanish fascism, helped by Nazism, shot Lluís Companys (president of the Catalan government during the Spanish Republic). Today, in 2017, this fascism, with total impunity, participates in the demonstrations organised by the party of the Government of Spain….”
Also, the Catalan foreign minister, Raül Romeva, has written a letter from Estremera prison where he has been imprisoned – with other members of the government – for just over a week in which he declares that “it is never revenge, nor hate, nor violence, that move us.”
Romeva emphasised that the Spanish National Court ordered his imprisonment “for wanting to build bridges, new bridges, solid bridges, over which all can pass, without exclusions, wherever it comes from, and wherever it goes.”
And he insisted that “we must persevere with the outstretched hand, in the will to dialogue, in the need to find political and negotiated ways”.
On the other hand, throughout the week, there have also been Spanish nationalist protests in several Catalan cities and in Valencia. In Manresa, 400 people demonstrated against the Catalan Republic, among them several Nazis from National Democracy (DN).
An anti-fascist demonstration protested a few meters away, separated by a broad police cordon.
Last Friday in Sabadell, hundreds of people mobilised by the Spanish nationalist organisation Societat Civil Catalana (SCC) also protested at the Catalan Republic. Among those present were also outright nazi groups such as National Democracy (DN) and other fascist organisations in the area. Some wore T-shirts with the letters AHTR (Adolf Hitler Was Right). During the protest, several journalists were attacked, including a Russian reporter for Ruptly Russia Today whom the fascists mistook for a reporter from the Catalan public TV3 network. Journalists of NacióSabadell, Catalunya Ràdio, ANC or RAC1 were also attacked.
VIDEO:
https://comunicacio21.cat/noticies-comunicacio21/124636-nous-atacs-als-periodistes-en-una-concentracio-unionista-a-sabadell
In Valencia, about 2,000 people demonstrated on Saturday 11 November against Catalonia, mobilised by the former leader of the Spanish Falange, Juan García Sentandreu. Among those taking part were the leaders of the far right parties, VOX and España2000, as well as representatives of the Popular Party (PP) which governs Spain.
The demonstration took place a month after gangs of fascists attacked the traditional demonstration of the Valencian left on 9th October (National Day of Valencian Country), wounding several participants.
Two weeks later, a large anti-fascist demonstration of more than 10,000 people took to the streets of Valencia to condemn these attacks.
The demonstration by the extreme right this Saturday was meant to be a response to the Valencian left but it was a real failure.
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