Catalan assembly seeks consensus to approve right-to-decide text

The Catalan parliament is expected to approve a resolution this week in favor of giving citizens the right to decide on the region’s future.

The text, which is set to be presented in the regional assembly on Thursday, has yet to secure consensus backing but it appears likely that its content will seek to lend a voice to the outpouring of secessionist sentiment displayed on September 11, the national day of Catalonia, when hundreds of thousands of people marched in favor of independence from Spain.

The political groupings Convergència i Unió (CiU), Iniciativa per Catalunya (ICV-EUiA), Esquerra and Solidaritat Catalana, which together count on 86 of the regional assembly’s 135 deputies among their number, are set to endorse the referendum.

Oriol Pujol, secretary general of the governing CDU half of the CiU coalition and a declared supporter of independence, confirmed on Sunday the information published by the daily La Vanguardia. “We are working toward making a parliamentary pronouncement in the face of a popular clamor, unanimous, conclusive and historic, seen around the world.” Antoni Castellà of the pro-independence sector of CiU, said Sunday: “This is not just playing to the crowd.”

The Catalan assembly has declared itself in favor of the right to self-determination in the past, such as during the break-up of the state of Yugoslavia at the beginning of the 1990s. ICV-EUiA has already tabled its text in which it calls for Catalans to go to the ballot boxes to decide what they want. “It is time to move from theory to practice. We ask that a commission be set up to draw up a timetable,” said eco-socialist Dolors Camats.