ANC occupies EU Commission HQ

With the political prisoners transferred to prisons in Madrid, the Catalan National Assembly (ANC) decided to end yesterday’s “day of pain” by occupying the European Commission’s office on Passeig de Gràcia in Barcelona. Blocking access to the building, a banner read “Self-determination is a right, not a crime.” However, the protest only received the support of the ERC and CUP parties.

With a demonstration called in the evening, only a few people in the ANC knew of the intention to change tack and occupy the EU headquarters. The protest began at 5.30pm, when three ANC members entered the building half an hour before it closed to drop off a letter addressed to the Commission’s president, Jean Claude Juncker. However, once inside, up to 20 other ANC members followed them in and occupied the HQ. The organisation then made a call for more people to come and protest, and by 7pm the protesters had occupied an entire lane of Passeig de Gracia, cutting off Provença street in the process, while more people arrived so that the protest reached Rosselló street.

The CUP and ERC party spokesmen, Carles Riera and Ruben Wagensberg, congratulated the organisation for its initiative and also called it important and necessary. “The European Commission has a duty to get involved, they are too used to looking the other way when it is about collective and individual rights,” said Wagensberg. For his part, Riera, called on people to mobilise and to those people calling for unity in the pro-independence camp, he answered: “Now is not the time for party and electoral battles, but rather a time to unite efforts because united we provide support fora citizens’ movement in favour of self-determination, it is the only way to win,” he said.