Council launch calls for unity

The Council for the Republic launched yesterday in Brussels with former president Carles Puigdemont calling for “unity” among pro-independence parties. Attending the event to present the Council was president Quim Torra, some of his ministers, MPs from the ERC and JxCat parties, as well as representatives of various organisations, and sympathisers. The big absence was the CUP party, which sees the initiative as “symbolic” rather than effective or democratic. During the presentation could be heard shouts of “Free the political prisoners”, “Independence” and “Puigdemont, our president”, but also shouts of “Buch resign” in reference to the Catalan police controversy.

In his speech, Puigdemont warned that without unity the independence camp will lose “moral authority” and defended the Council as the place to “design a united strategy”. “There is a call for unity in Catalonia and we have to listen,” he told the 400 people in the auditorium. Former minister Toni Comín made an appeal for “courage, intelligence and republican unity” to face an “authoritarian” state.

They were words also aimed at CUP, which yesterday released a statement denying support for the Council, which it sees as a product of “symbolic logic” that does not aim for “a democratic split from Spain” and without “mechanisms of democratic or popular control”. Sources in the Council said it “still lacked some agreements” and that the absence of CUP does not mean it will not join at a later date.

In the face of CUP’s criticism, the Council’s members argued that the project must involve the public. Puigdemont called on citizens to join the Council, as some 400,000 have done, to bring about the “most difficult” part of independence: “the recognition of a Catalan state”.