THE Spanish consulate in Edinburgh will be the scene of a demonstration in support of Catalonia’s right to have an independence referendum.
Organised by the Radical Independence Campaign (RIC), it will be held on October 1 to coincide with the Catalan poll.
“We wanted it to coincide with the referendum, which takes place on a Sunday,” said Jonathon Shafi from RIC.
“So that might be a limiting factor, but I’d like to see up to 1000 people or more turn out for it.
“We’re already getting a huge amount of interest and we’ll have speakers from not just the independence movement, but people speaking on basic democratic grounds as well. We’ll also have speakers from a number of Catalan organisations who are based in Scotland.”
Shafi said the demonstration would not simply be a single-party event: “There’ll be people from the SNP, the Greens and from no party. We have very well-established links with various organisations in Catalonia, so they’ll be utilising the images and video from our event to illustrate the European dimension.”
Given recent events in the independence-supporting state, Shafi said the issue was wider than Catalonia.
“We’re obviously very much in favour of Catalan independence, but while people might have differing views about that, they would respect their right to self-determination – and that should not be repressed in the way that the Spanish government is currently doing.”
Shafi said the situation in Catalonia appeared to be escalating every day, with mayors being taken to court, referendum materials being seized by police and municipal heads being called to court.
“This is reminiscent of the Franco era in terms of the approach that’s being taken. If you’re at the stage where you’re making that kind of parallel then it becomes a big question not just for Catalonia, but for the whole of Europe. No state should be able to behave like this, wielding that kind of repressive power in the face of a perfectly legitimate and democratic process.”
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