SERGI QUITIAN
Barcelona – 29.11.2019
“If the Catalans want to win you must polarize much more, climb much more, and accept high levels of sacrifice.” They are the words of Paul Engler, co-author, along with his brother Mark, of the Manual of Civil Disobedience (Saldonar), but if yesterday they attracted all the spotlights it was because they were cited by the president of the Generalitat, QuimTorra.
The head of the government called all independentists, via Twitter, to “listen carefully” to Engler’s reflections in an interview in Vilaweb where the American activist and director of the Center for the Working Poor unravels his controversial prescriptions to exert pressure against the State from nonviolent civil disobedience.
In fact, in the same interview shared in the networks by the president of the Generalitat, Paul Engler insists on “the enormous amounts of sacrifice” that requires a movement, social or political, if you want to reach your goals.
“Dying as a martyr is inherent in winning movements. It is not wanted to happen, but it is inevitable once you increase the tension ”, explains the co-author of a book that Torra already showed at a table of the Palau de la Generalitat during his institutional speech for the Diada de l’Onze de Setembre.
Torra’s recommendation sulfured the opposition. Ciudadanos yesterday registered a petition for the president to appear in the Parliament for encouraging “strategies to break civil peaceful coexistence among citizens as a violent means of persecution of forced unilateral separation” from Catalonia.
Ciudadanos’ spokeswoman in the Catalan Chamber, Lorena Roldán, said that “Torra demonstrates again that we have as president a true irresponsible ”. “He has not had enough with the chaos of recent weeks, which now asks to polarize society more and accept sacrifices,” Roldán reproached.
Not only did Ciudadanos denounce the message of the president of the Generalitat. The Comuns party also charged against a Torra that is already required to call for elections. “There is no need for martyrs, but recognition of Catalonia by the State and, at the same time, respect for the plurality of this country to find exit ways. If he does not govern for all, he should give way, ”said the president of this parliamentary group, Jessica Albiach.
“Call elections, for the good of all, we can not continue with such irresponsibility at the wheel of this country,” said deputy Marta Ribas.
It is not Torra’s first controversy to urge independentism to take another step in the forcefulness of its claims. “Squeeze, you are doing well squeezing,” spurred to the CDR on the first anniversary of the 1st October. Two months later, after a trip to Ljubljana, Torra asked to follow the example of the Slovenian road to independence.
From ERC they avoided yesterday to pronounce themselves, although it is revealed, once again, the difference of strategies between the two partners of the Government. Of course, the Civil Disobedience Manual is also read in the republican ranks – Vice President Pere Aragonès himself was made with a copy in the Setmana del Llibre in Català. There are sectors of the PDECat, on the other hand, that do not feel comfortable with this type of messages and frame it as a personal opinion of the president.
Presidency sources explain that Torra has read the book and it is usual for him to share the reflections it gives about non violence and civil disobedience. In any case, they specify that there are reflections of Engler that the president shares and others that do not, still considering its reading interesting.
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