The Catalan National Assembly and the Committees for the Defence of the Republic (CDRs), project on the facade of the building of the Presidency of the Catalan Generalitat government in Barcelona a video with images of the referendum vote and the police brutality on October 1st 2017
On the occasion of the seventh anniversary of the referendum, the Catalan National Assembly defended the revolutionary value of the First of October. Thousands gathered in front of the Palau de la Generalitat, where a manifesto was read and a video with images of the independence referendum and police brutality was projected on the façade. Among them, a clip from 2018 with the current president of Catalonia, socialist Salvador Illa, affirming that article 155 of the Spanish Constitution, which annulled Catalan self-government, should have been applied before the referendum was held.
Before the screening of the video, Assemblea’s National Structures Committee coordinator, Julià de Jòdar, and actress Pepa Arenós, representing the CDRs, read a joint manifesto placing the months of September and October 2017 as “the peak of our recent democratic revolution for independence so far”. In this sense, Arenós vindicated the First of October and its popular force based on three axes: “Civil organization, enough pressure on political parties, and active non-violent civil disobedience”.
The manifesto also calls for the pro-independence movement to use new ways to struggle and to “remove this mask that [the Spanish state] has put on before international eyes thanks to the pardons, the amnesty and all the other shams”. Finally, Julià de Jòdar recalled that Spain never fulfils any promises and insisted on the need to regain “strength and political initiative in the streets, at work and at home, but also in the institutions”.
In parallel to this event in Barcelona organised by Assemblea and the CDRs, other territorial assemblies of the Catalan National Assembly organised different events throughout Catalonia to commemorate this date.