The president of Ciudadanos, Inés Arrimadas, has returned to Catalonia today to remember the fifth anniversary of the so-called disconnection laws approved by the Parliament on September 6 and 7, 2017 as a preliminary step to the holding of the referendum on October 1 of that year. "Today we are on the scene to remember that five years ago a group of separatists thought they were above democracy and the rule of law," she explained.
"We are the only party that does not want this ignominy to be forgotten," announced the leader of Ciudadanos, whose party has launched a parliamentary initiative so that groups opposed to independence join a declaration condemning those events. However, Arrimadas himself has been skeptical about its scope: "The PP does not want it to be remembered because it was in government and did not stop the separatists, and the socialists, because today they are partners of nationalism and allow their rearmament."
For Arrimadas, who this afternoon will star in a telematic meeting with representatives of social and cultural entities to denounce that "attempted coup against democracy perpetrated by separatism", the event deserves to be remembered, however, because it was "a real madness", and likewise the nationalist parties "should be ashamed of those days of 2017", which he has defined as "black days".
"Some real criminals acted at night and treacherous, approving alleged laws at dawn that the only thing they managed to do was break Catalan society," recalled Arrimadas, who at that time led the opposition in the Catalan Chamber and who has claimed the role of the " constitutionalist demonstration" on October 8 and the King's speech, "which all constitutionalists remember with emotion and gratitude", to "stop the coup".
From the memory of those dates, the president of Ciudadanos has demanded for her party, now in very low hours, the lost protagonism and has accused the PP of "cowardice and self-conscious" in the government's management of that political crisis and the Socialist Party of being today "accomplice" of those who carried out "a coup that did not end" and who insist that "they will do it again".
In this sense, Arrimadas has charged against Xavier García Albiol and Miquel Iceta, the leaders of the PP and PSC in the Parliament at that time, to take advantage of his own role. "They would not have faced each other, their legs trembled," said the president of Ciudadanos, who recalled that Salvador Illa, current first secretary of the PSC and leader of the opposition to the Government, "has been a minister thanks to ERC."
From this point of view, Arrimadas has celebrated the existence of his party as an antagonist of the independence movement: "Lucky that Citizens are here and that the constitutionalists do not have to settle for those who were not able to do anything with an absolute majority. We do not forget or go to allow nationalism and its partners to erase these days from the memory of the Catalans".
For his part, the leader of Ciudadanos en Catalunya, Carlos Carrizosa, Arrimadas's right-hand man during the zenith of the procés in Parliament, has assured that "those fateful days deserve the condemnation of all democrats" and has accused the PSC of agreeing with "those who struck" and "tiptoe" over the matter.
For Ciudadanos, "it is evident that nationalism made a decision in which it showed little respect for democracy by destroying the Statute and the Parliament's regulations." Some facts, according to Carrizosa, of which Catalonia "is still suffering the consequences" in the form of a "deep social division", an "economic crisis due to the flight of companies" and an "institutional crisis" that has been exemplified by the current interim of the Parliament, which is without a presidency as a result of the suspension of Laura Borràs and which, in his opinion, "was detonated as an institution" at that time.
All these arguments have led the Ciudadanos group to promote a joint institutional declaration in Parliament to condemn the events of 2017 and express the commitment that "nothing like this will happen again". The document has already been circulated among all the spokespersons, but, despite being, in Carrizosa's opinion, a "moderate and sensible" proposal, for the moment it has been met with silence. "We are not sucking our thumb, those who promoted the coup will not sign it, but we are going to urge those who did not participate to sign a solemn declaration of condemnation and commitment," announced the president of the Citizens group in Parliament.
