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”.