"Com sempre". On July 3, 2017, the then Vice President of the Government, Oriol Junqueras, told Jordi Basté, in RAC1, that on October 1 they would vote "com sempre". The following day, the TNC hosts a act in which the details of the holding of the referendum are explained; the hashtag is launched
"Com sempre" is one of the main ideas that was born in the committee of ten or twelve people who have been meeting every day for several weeks to coordinate a joint communication strategy of the independence movement. Officials from the Government, Junts, ERC, Òmnium Cultural and the National Assembly of Catalonia (ANC) attend, who design strategies and “download” them to a newsroom of between 30 and 40 people who create content, including There are journalists, designers, mathematicians, computer scientists...
Between May and October 2017, and in parallel to the clandestine operation to buy ballot boxes and prepare for the referendum, this committee designs and launches its main ideas into the digital space every day. It has a powerful weapon: since 2014 they have been accumulating a database with emails and telephone numbers of up to 700,000 citizens, who have voluntarily provided their data to locate themselves at the exact point in the Diada demonstrations. They are your unconditional social base: your loudspeaker and your funder.
“We were very clear that we had to create our own communication environment or we would not succeed. It was essential to have a database and build a universe”, admits a member of the committee. “We knew it was illegal but we did it very well. They won't find out."
In the months prior to the referendum, the committee establishes its key ideas with irregular regularity, which deputies, government officials and entity leaders repeat with discipline. The organization is “military”, explains one of the members of that committee. "Nobody goes one millimeter off the script."
In parallel, the 700,000 people included in the database will receive hundreds of content created in that newsroom; its Telegram channel reaches 300,000 subscribers. A strategy of rapprochement is executed (often through Facebook) to those non-independence but tolerant fringes or defenders of the referendum, of the orbit of Comuns and the PSC. Sometimes in Spanish. The opposite is also sought. "We launched the message 'if you are not going to vote no, Catalonia will become independent', it was a guerrilla message to encourage the no, that was key," explains a member of an entity.
“We never used Russian bots or hackers, as has been said, simply because we didn't need it, we already had some very powerful digital speakers,” says a committee member. Another member of that committee admits that "a hacker helped us at some point to create web mirrors when ours were closed."
“The border that we never wanted to cross was that of the fake”, promises a communication manager involved in the campaign, “our message wanted to be positive, hopeful, with a lot of colour, even if it was to say that, in an independent Catalonia, Rodalies it would work”.
One of the ideas that they wanted to reinforce was the “democracy yes/democracy no” dilemma. As on the unionist side, help was sought in the US. In 2014 they hired Blue State digital, an electoral marketing agency that had also worked for Barack Obama. She was the creator of the slogan Ara és l'hora, prior to 9-N. The campaign, joint between the ANC and Òmnium, never concealed that, among its objectives, were to "create a database of 2.5 million people who affirm that they will vote YES on November 9" and to "build a communicative action that gets the message across to everyone living in the country”.
The committee also has a key role in the response of the independence movement to the attacks of 17-A in Barcelona and Cambrils. "It was not his job, but he was fantastic to keep the bloc together," explains the former senior government official.
Under the common guidelines, in the 2017 strategy each party and entity had its own life, with lines or content that allowed them to accentuate their own profile. While the ANC campaign called for the affirmative vote in the referendum, Òmnium also tried to mobilize the opposite vote.
"If we wanted a credible and binding referendum, he should not go to the polls," explains a source close to Òmnium. A critical moment was on September 20, when the Civil Guard entered the Ministry of Economy, because "that once again made the referendum incredible."
The strategy included messages of support for Ada Colau. As mayor of Barcelona and because of her power to cede voting spaces, her position in favor of the referendum was key.
Money was not a problem. Five sources consulted are emphatic in stating that not a single public euro was used. With that database, explains the member of the coordinating committee, "you asked for help to pay for a banner and the next day you had triple what was necessary in your account." “In 24 hours”, add sources close to the ANC, “you could easily raise 100,000 euros”.
One of the unknowns of that period is why Julian Assange, the creator of Wikileaks, a refugee since 2012 in the Ecuadorian embassy in London, intervenes. Sources close to the committee justify it by his interest in a disruptive political movement like the Catalan one. "It is a genuine interest, he considers that Barcelona is one of the places in the world where the most interesting things are happening," explains this source. "We had contact with him, but if he tweeted about the process it was because he was interested, not because we asked him to." Were you previously contacted or hired with the aim of helping the independence movement? One of the people who worked on that campaign for an entity limits himself to answering a laconic “we don't”.
Between September 17 and October 27, Assange published 38 tweets with the hashtag
On November 9, 2017, the founder of Wikileaks was visited at the Ecuadorian embassy in London by a member of the so-called "Estat Major" of the process Oriol Soler, accompanied by a collaborator, Arnau Grinyó, according to El País, with photographs of the entrance of both to the building.
Sources close to the Estat Major assure that this was the first time that Soler came face to face with Assange, although they admit that there was a previous relationship: "The one maintained by all the movements that want to change the world," they describe.
During the meeting at the embassy, the activist even made a prediction of what was going to happen in the imminent 21-D elections: the opponents of the independence movement were very powerful and would use all their resources to beat them at the polls.
A few months later, on March 28, 2018, Ecuador cut Assange's internet connection, considering that he had violated the "written commitment that he assumed with the Government at the end of 2017, by which he obliged not to issue messages that implied an interference in relation to other states”. Two days earlier, on March 26, Assange had posted a tweet comparing the Gestapo arrest of Lluís Companys to the arrest of Carles Puigdemont in Germany. Although it wasn't the only callus he had stepped on; the same day he tweeted against the expulsion of Russian diplomats from the UK over the poisoning of spy Sergei Skripal.
After 1-O (just when unionism activated its machinery), and especially after the failed declaration of independence, the sovereignist side broke down and each actor took the reins of their own strategy.
In the first moments of the communication committee's life, one of its members raised a strategic debate: that campaign that was going to lead to 1-O and the vote itself would hardly lead to independence, but it would help them learn. They put it in broth.
