2023
On Thursday, the 19th of January, a summit between Spain and France took place in Barcelona, which had not been celebrated since 1987.
It was the second time in his history that Catalonia held this type of meeting. The assistants were Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s president; Emmanuel Macron, France’s president; Pere Aragonès, Catalonia’s president, and Ada Colau, Barcelona’s mayor. The Catalan nation understands the intention of meeting with the nearest country, but, as we don’t feel like part of Spain, we are totally against the fact that was held in our country.
Using the context of this meeting, the Spanish government said that the independentist process was dead and, from Jovent Republicà, we have very clear that nothing has finished and we are still fighting for our beliefs: against repression and in favor of self-determination and independence.
Moreover, the summit content did not fit with any of our revindications, neither from our national perspective nor from the ecologist perspective; as the H2Med project is a whitewash of the gases industry. We understand that this project is unsustainable in energetical and economical terms, in which geopolitical interests are more important than environmental ones.
For these reasons, the Catalan government's participation in this meeting generates a lot of disagreements. We asked Esquerra Republicana to situate our historical revindications at the center of the discussion and to take advantage of this summit to make sure everybody is aware of the Catalan situation.
In order to express our disapproval towards the Spanish and French meeting, on the same 19th of January at 9 o’clock, a demonstration was organized by ANC (Assemblea Nacional Catalana), Òmnium Cultural and Consell per la República, with the support from Esquerra Republicana, CUP and Junts per Catalunya. We, as Jovent Republicà, also took part in it, as well as many Catalan youth organizations.
Spanish and french meeting in Barcelona