BARCELONA // About 1.4 million Catalans gathered in Barcelona yesterday to support independence from Spain.
The Catalan National Day marks the start of campaigning for the regional parliamentary elections, to be held on September 27, and secessionists are pushing for pro-independence candidates to win the majority of seats.
Regional premier Artur Mas has said he planned to unilaterally declare independence should he win a parliamentary majority this month.
Pro-independence parties need 68 seats in the 135-member parliament to push forward. Polls show them on track to win a slim majority, which they say would be a mandate to draft a Catalan constitution and attempt secession negotiations with the central government.
Raul Romeva, the top candidate on a list representing a block of pro-independence parties, said that what they had wanted was an independence referendum – so that Catalonia’s voters could directly express their wishes but that the central government in Madrid had refused to hold one meaning “the only way we can know what the people want is to use the elections on the 27th”.
A unilateral declaration of independence for the highly industrialised north-east region, with a population of 7.5 million and about 18 per cent of Spain’s economic output, could be made by the parliament by 2017, separatists said.
“I am willing to go to the end of this process if we have the majority of seats in parliament,” said Mr Mas.
However, he said independence aspirations must be put on hold if backers did not win a majority in the regional parliament.
The central government in Madrid has insisted that independence for the region is unconstitutional.
Spanish officials also said they would not let Spaniards who live in Catalonia be stripped of their Spanish citizenship.
Polls have shown Catalans overwhelmingly support the right for a secession referendum but are evenly divided over whether they actually want the region to be independent and would be against it if it meant a Catalan state would be outside the European Union.
Protester Noelia Godoy, 25, a transport company worker, said that she would vote for a pro-independence party
because she believed Catalonia did not get back what it paid in taxes. Besides the economic argument, Ms Godoy said Catalans had “our own language, a culture, customs”.
“We share many things (with Spain), but there are other very different things,” she said.
“We feel like a nation and that’s why we want to be independent.”
Carme Sanchez, a 54-year-old warehouse worker, arrived in Barcelona on a bus from the town of Torello, with her pro-independence flag in hand.
She used to be against independence but changed her mind after the central government would not allow Catalans to hold a secession referendum.
“I thought that all of us, Spain and Catalonia, could live freely together,” she said.
“But the party that now governs us has made me turn pro-independence because even though the Catalan people want to vote on independence, they are always saying no.”
* Associated Press and Agence France-Presse
http://ift.tt/1LorVy5
3Novices Europe
No comments:
Post a Comment