There is less than one month to go before the Eleventh of September, Catalonia’s National Day, and as the date draws near, the large event in Barcelona called by the pro-independence organisations Assemblea Nacional Catalana (Catalan National Assembly, ANC) and Òmnium is gaining more participants. The Via Lliure a la República Catalana (Avenue to the Catalan Republic), which aims to fill Avinguda de la Meridiana from the Sant Andreu neighbourhood to Ciutadella Park (5.2 km) has already filled more than 30 stretches of the 35 along the route, and more than 130,000 people have registered.

The Via Lliure arrives after three years in a row of historical pro-independence mobilisations in which more than one million people have participated as a whole. The pace of registrations this year is higher than last year, when 1,800,000 demonstrators gathered together in Barcelona between Diagonal and Gran Via. This year’s demonstration is also expected to be huge. In fact, 1,000 coaches have already been rented to carry demonstrators to Barcelona.

The entities Catalan National Assembly and Òmnium Cultural, which are in charge of organising the event through Ara és l’Hora (Now is the Time), have published a map showing the evolution in registrations along each stretch of the route.

The Via Lliure abroad



On an international scale, the ANC is also organising events leading up to the one in Barcelona, gatherings to be held in different cities. In Poland they have already been held in a few towns, and this month they will be held in around 30 cities all over the world. On the 23rd of August, gatherings have been planned in Amsterdam and Berlin, and on the 30th of August others will be held in New York, Washington, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Santiago de Chile and Brisbane (Australia). The plans for all the gatherings will be firmed up within the next few days.

An event ‘for everyone’



The Eleventh of September will not only be the National Day prior to the plebiscite to be held on the 27th of September; it also dovetails with the kick-off of the electoral campaign. The President of the Catalan National Assembly, Jordi Sànchez, has made it clear that he does not want the National Day to become an electoral event: ‘Everyone who believes in the right to decide and the need to push for a new country will have a place there.’ Thus, the event welcomes not only those who are going to vote a double yes in the consultation scheduled for the 9th of November, but also those who will choose other options.

‘The longest electoral list in Europe’

The pro-independence candidacy made up of the CDC, ERC and civil society has undertaken an initiative to make ‘the longest electoral list in Europe’. The initial goal of Junts pel Sí (Together for the ‘Yes’) was to gather together 13,500 ‘candidates’ to support the candidates that will ultimately be on the list for the Parliament on the 27th of September, that is, 100 supporters for each of the 135 candidates who will run for a seat. The day after the initiative was announced, the goal had already been met and exceeded. Now the campaign is determined to reach 40,000 candidates, the same as the number of volunteers who organised the voting on the 9th of November.