2009 - 2019 A decade for independence

The role of the Falange

In July, leaflets from the far-right group, the Falange Española, began to ap­pear in let­ter boxes. The ma­te­r­ial at­tacked the vote and tried to dis­credit the or­gan­is­ers. Graf­fiti also ap­peared in the form of tar­gets with the name of CUP or Xi­me­nis. “The aim was clear, they wanted to gen­er­ate fear among the lo­cals and turn the pub­lic against us,” says Xi­me­nis. The cam­paign by the far-right would not end there, and in Au­gust they re­quested per­mis­sion from the Cata­lan au­thor­i­ties to protest out­side the town hall on Sep­tem­ber 13. The coun­cil pro­posed chang­ing the lo­ca­tion of the protest, re­port­ing con­cerns to the po­lice about the protest and the vote tak­ing place to­gether. The au­thor­i­ties gave the Falange per­mis­sion to demon­strate on Sep­tem­ber 13 in Plaça Catalunya, later post­pon­ing it by a week. That led the group to com­plain to the high court in Cat­alo­nia (TJSC), which al­lowed the protest on Sep­tem­ber 13, but away from the vot­ing.

“These in­ci­dents with the Falange spurred on many peo­ple who were un­de­cided and over­came the fear even though the threat was real,” says Xi­me­nis.

Every­thing sped up in the weeks lead­ing up to Sep­tem­ber 13. The ini­tia­tive got sup­port from pub­lic fig­ures, with then pres­i­dent Pasqual Mara­gall first among them. The Junta Aval­u­adora de la Con­sulta was also set up, which had the role of an elec­toral com­mis­sion in an elec­tion. “The ref­er­en­dum had to have all the guar­an­tees and be scrupu­lous so as to main­tain cred­i­bil­ity,” says then MP, Uriel Bertran, who was a mem­ber of the com­mis­sion.

The role of the state

Sep­tem­ber began with the an­nounce­ment that the state was chal­leng­ing the mo­tion passed by the local coun­cil in an at­tempt to halt the vote. The ini­tia­tive was a headache for then prime min­is­ter, Rodríguez Za­p­a­tero. A Barcelona court pro­vi­sion­ally sus­pended the ap­proval of the mo­tion, and four days be­fore the vote, the TSJC ruled that the local coun­cil could not allow mu­nic­i­pal fa­cil­i­ties to be used for the vote, while also grant­ing the Falange the right to protest on that day. “An agree­ment was quickly reached with the Cen­tre Moral to use its premises,” says Xi­me­nis.

On Cat­alo­nia’s Na­tional Day on Sep­tem­ber 11, the ref­er­en­dum or­gan­is­ers re­ceived wide­spread sup­port. Bil­beny and Car­les Móra headed the march on that day and were the first to ad­dress the crowds. “Hear­ing thou­sands of peo­ple cry­ing “We are all from Arenys de Munt” was a for­mi­da­ble ex­pe­ri­ence and showed us that we had cho­sen the right way to re­cover the dig­nity of the peo­ple,” says the his­to­rian.

Media in­ter­est

De­spite the au­thor­i­ties in Madrid dis­miss­ing the vote as a local pop­u­lar event of lit­tle im­por­tance, Sep­tem­ber 13 gen­er­ated a lot of in­ter­est in the in­ter­na­tional media, and more than 300 pro­fes­sion­als re­ceived ac­cred­i­ta­tion. Arenys de Munt had been put on the map. Cor­re­spon­dent, Gary Gib­son, who was prepar­ing a re­port on the re­la­tion­ship be­tween Cat­alo­nia and Spain for the BBC re­mem­bers being caught up in the en­thu­si­asm. “Every­one treated it like a party, a cel­e­bra­tion of democ­racy, al­though that did not stop the vot­ing process being treated with rig­or­ous pro­to­col,” he says.

Vot­ing began at 9am and the queues in front of the Cen­tre Moral began early, show­ing that the peo­ple of Arenys wanted to get in­volved. Around noon, mem­bers of the Falange ar­rived in a coach, es­corted by the Cata­lan po­lice. They were re­ceived by dozens of lo­cals who im­pro­vised a cassero­lada (a protest by bang­ing pots and pans) so that the right-wing spokesman could barely be heard. “There weren’t even a hun­dred of them and they lim­ited them­selves to shout­ing slo­gans and wav­ing Span­ish flags. When they were leav­ing a group of anti-es­tab­lish­ment young­sters barred the coach’s way, but we talked to them and the mat­ter went no fur­ther. The only in­ci­dent was a bro­ken win­dow on the bus,” says Mas.

Mean­while, the ref­er­en­dum went ahead. Xi­me­nis says that from the first they had wanted a pro­gramme of ac­tiv­i­ties, from mu­si­cal per­for­mances to pa­rades, that would strengthen the fes­ti­val at­mos­phere, a strat­egy “that has been re­peated in the other ref­er­en­dums since,” he says.

At 8pm the cen­tre closed and the vote count­ing began under the watch­ful eyes of the mem­bers of the Junta Aval­u­adora. Two hours later, Xi­me­nis and other mem­bers of the com­mis­sion came out and an­nounced the re­sults. The over­whelm­ing vic­tory of the ’yes’ vote led to wide­spread joy. “After so much ef­fort, pres­sure and threats, it was an au­then­tic mo­ment of emo­tion and joy for hav­ing achieved what we had set out to do: ex­er­cise our right to de­cide,” says Xi­me­nis, while Bil­beny adds: “We did more than hold a ref­er­en­dum, we lifted the peo­ple and re­stored their dig­nity.” Both men in­sist that the road to in­de­pen­dence “has no re­verse gear”. “The pub­lic is sure of it, what we lack are the po­lit­i­cal lead­ers to make it hap­pen,” they con­clude.