Palamós Declaration

DECLARATION ON THE OCCASION OF THE TRANSFER OF THE PRISONERS.
Palamós, February 1 2019.
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Friday February 1: MANIFESTO ON THE OCCASION OF THE TRANSFER OF THE PRISONERS: Concentration before Palamós town hall to denounce that self-determination is a right, not a crime

Original: https://sites.google.com/a/escolaemporda.cat/anc-palamos/afegir-acte/divendres1defebrerconcentraciodavantlajuntamentdepalamosperdenunciarquelautodeterminacioesundretnoundelicte


The revenge and shamefulness of a State that is running amok has been put into effect today. Today our political representatives and a large part of the Government legally chosen by the Catalans have been taken captive to the capital of the Kingdom of Spain, to be subjected to a farce of manipulated justice.

Today the dignity of the Catalan people departed in several vans, guarded by the security forces that beat us up on October 1, 2017. Today they left in handcuffs as if they were dangerous terrorists or plain criminals.

They know, however, that they need not worry about their hands, because theirs are the hands of people who believe in peace. They know that fantastic stories have been invented to accuse them of having gone against the "Unity of the Fatherland", which others seek to protect over and above people's will.

The others believe that they have defeated them by keeping them isolated, for over a year, from their people, their families. The others believed that their clamour would wither away, that their commitment would have been dumped in some corner of their cold cell. But the others have never been so wrong.

The [political prisoners'] fortitude has been based on their deep conviction in their ideals of freedom and justice, they have been able to feed on the warmth that their families has given them, they have been able to see that one day and the next people headed towards the prisons to celebrate Christmas, to bid the year farewell, to sing songs of support or to wish them "good night" every evening: and today... to tell them that they'll never walk alone.

The others think that they are taking to Madrid people who will lower their gaze, people who will only fight to get the shortest sentence and that the magnanimity of the Spanish courts will thus be seen. But nothing could be further from the truth: it is our prisoners who want to grapple face to face, it is our representatives who want to let fly at a State that has never overcome the Franco era, faced with the most serious accusations of lack of democracy and the lack of "separation of powers".

Today, even if our flagpoles get chopped down again, we are here, in the street, with our flags blowing in the wind, with our slogans against a "show trial", continually alert - here as in the rest of the country - to stand beside those politicians who have had to bear the anger of the others, just for the honourable fact of doing what they had always promised to do: to give the people their say.

Today we are here and we will shall go wherever we have to in order to ensure that there was no rebellion but democracy ... that there was no sedition but a legal process of self-determination ... that there was no violence on our part, but only on theirs ... that there was no embezzlement but a very well-organized strategy, and this the othes have never stomached.

Today we are here because we want our warmth to reach them through the media, as it has for the whole of this long year.

We are here for you, Jordi Sánchez.

We are here for you, Jordi Cuixart

We are here for you, Carme Forcadell

We are here for you, Dolores Bassa

We are here for you, Oriol Jonqueras

We are here for you, Quim Forn

We are here for you, Jordi Turull

We are here for you, Josep Rull

We are here for you, Raül Romeva

We are here for all the part of the Government that we have in exile, for the policies exiled in Switzerland and for all those in charge of this shame of Judgment, which seeks to justify the greatest repression of our recent history.

We are here ... because we continue to believe that self-determination is an essential right for any people and not a crime.

They began the offensive by shouting, hatefully, "Go get 'em!". Now it is up to us to respond to our own: just, democratic and peaceful ... now it is up to us to go for them.