Strasbourg, 12/09/2013 (Agence Europe) - Catalans remain resolute in their call for independence and as proof of this, on Wednesday 11 September, they formed a 400-km human chain throughout the autonomous region of Catalonia in Spain.
More than one and a half million Catalans took part in the event on their national day, Diada (commemorating the defeat of Barcelona to the French army in 1714). A handful of Catalan nationalists travelled to Strasbourg the same day to make the same call for independence at the European Parliament's plenary session.
The separatists are calling for a referendum next year, the three-hundredth anniversary of the Diada, on their right to self-determination. The current president of Catalonia, Artur Mas, a Centre-Right nationalist, based his election campaign last year on the referendum issue. He told reporters on French newspaper Le Figaro that the idea was to organise a referendum or a popular consultation in 2014. He said his department has drawn up four legal formulae for such a ballot and, if the state refused to allow it, then as a last resort they would turn the regional elections for 2016 into a referendum.
The European Commission refused to comment, saying that this was a domestic question for the country itself. Last year, EU Fundamental Rights Commissioner Viviane Reding sent a letter to the Catalan authorities stating that the EU could not unilaterally recognise the declaration of independence of a section of an EU member state. Without an explicit request from Spain, the Commission refuses to consider such an event. (MD/transl.fl)