For the CUP, appealing to article 92 of the Constitution, which recognizes a consultative referendum for “political decisions of special importance, is a dead path today. It is a model that Pere Aragonès proposes after the report that the Institut d’Estudis de l’Auotgovern (IEA) gave him this Tuesday and that the number one on the CUP list for the parliamentary elections on May 12, Laia Estrada , has made it clear that he rejects it, this morning at a press conference at the training headquarters. Now, the Cubans do not completely close the agreed route. With many nuances, of course, because it considers that the State will not consent if it does not feel obliged to do so.
“The State will only agree to recognize the right to self-determination and agree to it when it has no other choice,” Estrada replied to the also national coordinator of ERC. And so that he has no choice but to agree to it, the head of the CUP list has offered to sit down with the president: “Whenever you want, Mr. Aragonès, we will sit down and talk to see how we have to do it to force the Spanish State to “that there is no other solution than to recognize our right to self-determination.”
However, he has not specified what methods his training proposes, but it represents, with the i’s still to be crossed, a change in his opinion. Throughout its years in Parliament, the CUP has opted for a unilateral referendum or a referendum agreed upon or recognized by the international community, but it had never explicitly opted in public for a scenario in which the State is willing to agree to it, by far that the machine was forced.
The CUP’s strategy involves generating a scenario of tension like the one experienced on October 3, 2017, when thousands of citizens took to the streets after the unilateral referendum two days before to protest police violence. The Cuperos believe that only in a similar rupture scenario would the State be forced to negotiate a self-determination vote.
The press conference served for the anti-capitalist formation to present its campaign slogan: “Defensem la terra” (Let’s defend the land). Laia Estrada and the number two on the list, Laure Vega, have justified the election given the current situation in which citizens find themselves: “a climate emergency that is evident above all with the drought, a generalized impoverishment of the population as a consequence of the rising cost of life” and a setback in the national question, “with an offensive against the Catalan language.”
But the rest of the pro-independence parties look the other way, according to Estrada, since “the situation is a consequence of policies subordinated to the interests of the economic elites and employers and the Spanish Government.”
The CUP does not buy the route proposed by Aragonès, but it has agreed with his suggestion of creating a specific department to defend the Catalan language. They share the idea, but the nuances return. For Estrada, “it is not enough,” because it must, but it must be “guaranteed that it has resources” and that it is effective and has “authority over the rest of the ministries.” Furthermore, he demands that the sentences “against Catalan” in school be addressed.
