Around 115 thousand people celebrate Catalonia Day in Barcelona

A The Diada 2022 demonstration had 150 thousand participants and according to the Barcelona Urban Guard this had already been the smallest mobilization in ten years (except for the pandemic).

The Catalan National Assembly, the civil society entity that promotes the Diada demonstrations, estimated 800,000 participants in today’s demonstration, 100,000 more than those it calculated in 2022.

Catalans celebrate Catalonia Day in the streets today, a journey to demand independence for decades, but which has lost its mobilization power in recent years, after the failed attempt at self-determination in 2017.

Between 2012 and 2018, Diada demonstrations mobilized hundreds of thousands of people and in some years participation reached more than one million, according to various sources.

This year, Diada coincides with the formation of Spain’s new government, following the elections on July 23, which gave a decisive role to the Catalan and Basque independence parties, as the reappointment of socialist Pedro Sánchez as prime minister depends on them. .

Despite the protagonism of the independence parties, all these formations lost votes and deputies, in favor of the socialists, who even won the July 23rd elections in Catalonia.

The two major Catalan independence parties, the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) and Together for Catalonia (JxCat), which elected seven deputies each in the Spanish elections, have already expressed their willingness to negotiate the reappointment of Pedro Sánchez as prime minister.

ERC and JxCat ask for amnesty for independentists accused and convicted by the courts because of the 2017 attempt at self-determination and want the possibility of a referendum on independence to be part of the agreements that are eventually reached with the socialists.

In the last Spanish legislature, the ERC already made Sánchez’s government viable and negotiated with the socialists a pardon for the independentists who were in prison and the elimination of the crime of sedition from the Penal Code.

JxCat voted against Sánchez’s investiture and condemned the dialogue between the ERC regional executive and the central government.

The Catalan National Assembly asked both parties today, on Catalan National Day, not to forget that the objective is the region’s independence and not to enable Sánchez to take office as prime minister or “give stability to the State”.

In this year’s Diada manifesto, the Catalan National Assembly even admits to presenting its own “civic list” in the next regional elections, scheduled for 2024, if the ERC and JxCat do not work with the objective of “making independence effective”.

“Independence or nothing! Independence or elections”, said the president of the ANC, Dolors Feliu, at the end of today’s demonstration.

Both ERC and JxCat leaders were present at this year’s demonstration, after in 2022 the president of the regional government, Pere Aragonès, from the Republican Left, did not participate, at the height of disagreements with Together for Catalonia and criticism from the Catalan National Assembly .

A year later, the Catalan independence activists, despite exchanging some accusations, took to the streets together again today, as had happened in the previous decade.

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