Far from the pageantry and martiality of the parade of the National Holiday in Madrid, on October 12 Barcelona has been given a splendid autumnal morning in which some 2,200 people, according to figures from the Urban Guard, among whom there was a notable presence of entities Latin American women, have gathered on Passeig de Gràcia to celebrate Hispanic Heritage, the other great claim, along with the tribute to the Virgen del Pilar, patron saint of Spain and the Civil Guard, of the day.
Before the march and next to the stall in which Cataluña Suma, organizer of the call, sold its merchandising products with the red flag, the political leaders of the four groups represented in the demonstration have been taking the floor to claim, from the Catalan capital, the unity of Spain.
Ciudadanos has started, which has displayed a large Spanish flag in the middle of the road. Mariluz Guilarte, her candidate for mayor of Barcelona, has vindicated the system of values and freedoms of modern Spain and has expressed her wish that cohesion prevails on a day like today's. "In Barcelona, which has always championed the recognition of cultural and linguistic diversity, the majority of citizens feel as Catalan as Spanish," Guilarte proclaimed.
For his part, the president of the formation in Catalonia, Carlos Carrizosa, has criticized the absence of the socialists in the demonstration and has recalled that the PSOE was the party that, during the presidency of Felipe González, established on October 12 as National Holiday in 1987, for which he has accused Salvador Illa of being "ashamed" of this date by not attending the celebration. "Who has seen them and who sees them?" said Carrizosa, who lamented the attacks that Spain receives from those who "challenge the transition" from "Hispanophobic" positions.
The president of the Catalan PP, Alejandro Fernández, has had a memory for those Catalans who, like Josep Pla, Montserrat Caballé or Joan Miró, represent "the universal Hispanic culture" that unites all Spaniards and has extolled the ties with the people " brothers" of Latin America, with special reference to the Venezuelans, Cubans and Nicaraguans, whom he sees under "the yoke of dictatorship and totalitarianism" and whom "the PP will always defend because it is the party of freedom, the Constitution and democracy".
Together with him, the leader of the PP in the Barcelona City Council, Josep Bou, has claimed the plurality of the march and has underlined its festive nature. "It is an act in which we all fit. It is not a political act," said Bou, for whom what is commemorated today is that Spain discovered "a new continent for Christian civilization."
In this sense, Bou recalled that Christopher Columbus left the port of Barcelona on his second trip to America and that numerous Catalans and Aragonese contributed to the Hispanization of the New World, for which he criticized, "with pain", the mayor, Ada Colau, for not participating in the celebration.
The leader of Valents and councilor in the Barcelona City Council, Eva Parera, has demanded that next year the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, designate the city of Barcelona as the official setting for the celebration of October 12 and has charged against the independence movement for having expelled, in his opinion, the State of Catalonia. "Words don't help us, we want facts," she exclaimed.
"We want more presence of the State, more judges, more police and more educational inspectors finding out what is happening in our schools," demanded Parera, for whom the pacts between the PP and the PSOE with the nationalists have led the State to "abandon" Catalonia. "We do not want a dialogue table and we do want a blow to the government's table. If you really believe that Catalonia is Spain, you have to stop listening to what the ERC wants and start listening to what we Catalan constitutionalists want," he concluded. stop.
The last to appear has been the leader of Vox in Catalonia, Ignacio Garriga, who has arrived to the applause of his own and accompanied by Javier Ortega Smith, whom he has just replaced as secretary general of the ultra-nationalist formation. Garriga has referred to the "universal twinning" of the Hispanic-American peoples and has expressed his "pride" that Catalonia forms part of the "great nation" that is Spain, a sentiment that "torpedoes" separatism, which, according to the far-right leader, "hand in hand with the left".
"This is not a time to be lukewarm," exclaimed Garriga, who has accused the PP and PSOE of contributing to "neutralizing" Catalans who feel they are Spanish. For his part, Ortega Smith, with a Carlist cross embroidered on his shirt, has pointed out that it is "the hour of the brave" in the face of "false Catalanist constitutionalisms", alluding to the approach of the new leader of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, to approaches of moderate Catalanism. "We are going to continue fighting from the streets, the institutions and the courts. If they have not managed to break Spain in 40 years, they are not going to succeed now," he concluded.
