The three demonstrations will feature the symbolic themes Present and Future and will conclude with political events in all three cities. Girona and Amposta will connect with Barcelona to follow the main speeches.
The Catalan National Assembly, Òmnium Cultural, the Association of Municipalities for Independence (AMI), the Council of the Republic, Intersindical and CIEMEN presented on Tuesday the pro-independence mobilisation for the 11th of September. The event will once again be decentralised and held simultaneously in Barcelona, Girona and Amposta, under the slogan “I AM HERE. WE ARE HERE. For the present and for the future: INDEPENDENCE.” The organisations call on people to fill the streets to demand independence as the only answer to the main social, economic and national challenges facing Catalonia.
The mobilisation maintains the decentralised model introduced two years ago. Barcelona, Girona and Amposta will once again become the three main gathering points of the Diada, sharing the same message and a similar staging. Barcelona and Amposta will each feature two separate columns, Present and Future, which will converge at the final gathering point. Girona will have a single march, but these two themes will also be present throughout the mobilisation. The demonstrations will conclude with a political event in each of the three cities, and Amposta and Girona will connect with Barcelona to follow the main speeches.
The themes Present and Future symbolise, on the one hand, the response to the problems the country is facing today—fiscal plunder, the deterioration of public services, the housing crisis, the collapse of infrastructure and the language emergency—and, on the other, the commitment to building a free, fairer Catalonia with greater opportunities. The organisations call for the initiative to be recovered through citizen mobilisation: “A massive and broad-based mobilisation is needed to place independence back at the centre of the political agenda, to stand up to the Spanish State, and to compel the pro-independence parties to once again make this objective their priority.”
During the presentation, the president of the Catalan National Assembly, Josep Vila, called on people to fill the streets of Barcelona, Girona and Amposta: “We are addressing all citizens who want to turn around this declining Catalonia, who want to fight for better healthcare, better education, the defence of the Catalan language, farming, our land, social rights and national freedom. Because all these struggles have one thing in common: the lack of political and economic sovereignty.”
The president of Òmnium Cultural, Xavier Antich, argued that “we must once again create cracks in this false normality, and it must be an organised and mobilised citizenry that returns to the forefront of defending rights and freedoms.” Antich also called for building “a shared project capable of bringing into Catalan identity—and into the pro-independence movement—people who have come from all over the world.”
For his part, the president of the Association of Municipalities for Independence (AMI), Salvador Coll, maintained that “independence is the tool that will enable municipalities to have the resources and powers needed to respond to the needs of their citizens.”
The vice-president of the board of the Council of the Republic, Montserrat Rossell, denounced that “fiscal plunder continues to deprive Catalonia of the resources needed to guarantee quality public services and make the investments the country requires.”
The Secretary General of Intersindical, Sergi Perelló, stressed that “independence is an opportunity to improve the living and working conditions of the majority of the population—the working class.”
Finally, the president of CIEMEN, David Minoves, called for mobilisation “to defend Catalan in the streets, in schools, in shops, in institutions and in the digital world; that is also what this coming 11th of September is about: Catalan as a language of social cohesion.”
With this new decentralised mobilisation, the six organisations aim once again to turn the National Day into a major demonstration of strength by the pro-independence movement across the country. They are calling on all citizens to take part in the demonstrations in Barcelona, Girona and Amposta and to fill the streets this 11th of September.
All information about the National Day mobilisation can be found at diada.assemblea.cat/english, which was launched today.