The former president of the Generalitat of Catalonia, leader of the Juntas and escapee from Spanish justice, Carles Puigdemont, claimed this Tuesday through a video broadcast by his party, coinciding with the seventh anniversary of the illegal referendum of 2017, which he convened and carried out as regional president, recalling that “the 1-O is looming horizon because it opens the way forward” and emphasizing that this consultation “was not the end of anything” but the beginning of a period “essential for the survival of our nation and as a society”.
Puigdemont valued this date of October 1, 2017, the date of the illegal referendum on independence, as “a historic victory in democratic terms, mobilization and message to the world”. It was, according to him, an “exceptional” act, because “the circumstances and consequences” which surrounded the 1-O, which took place despite “the hostility of the powers of the Spanish State” which threatened in a “climate of repression, violence and police hatred”.
But the leader of Junts, who is a member of the Parliament of Catalonia, affirmed that this event, which led to the application of article 155 of the Constitution, the dismissal of the government and the flight of several councilors to the foreigner to avoid the action of the Spanish Justice, “is part of the past and part of the future”, so it is already a “reference” to build the independent Catalonia of the future.
In this sense, he criticized Salvador Illa (PSC), president of the Generalitat and his partners of the ERC, without citing them, when he warned that playing politics by trying to do without 1-O, such a “strong” “fact”, is “doing politics without the reality principle”; “They cannot change history,” he added in a videotaped intervention lasting just over four minutes. 1-O “is not a prison”, “it is an act of dignity” to “conquer” freedom. “This project is alive and necessary,” he insisted.
“1-O is on the horizon because it opens a path forward. (…) It was not the end of anything, but the beginning of a period that was inevitably uncertain, difficult and risky, but at the same time essential to the survival of our nation and our society.” he declared at the end of the video, insisting that. the “repression” of these seven years, since 2017, “They took it upon themselves to demonstrate” this need for “survival”.
