20.01.2014 - 17:39
The Catalan National Assembly collected 234,481 signatures in favor of independence as part of their campaign ‘Sign for a vote in favor of independence’ in the span of just two days, during the weekend of January 11-12. The campaign was carried out among 827 different booths throughout Catalonia. The campaign continues with stands and booths and a second massive collection campaign planned for March 22-23, according to the ANC, who called the results ‘much higher than they expected’.
At the same time as they released the figures, the ANC published a video that sums up the ‘Sign for a vote for independence’ campaign and which features, in addition to various people signers, Carme Forcadell, the ANC president, Rosa Alentorn, campaign coordinator, and lawyer Magda Oranich, along with the speeches that they made during the Catalan Way 2014: ‘What we need to do to win our independence’.
A Plan B for the referendum
This plan is one of the five most important projects that the ANC has planned for 2014. According to the initiative’s coordinator, Rosa Alentorn, ‘it’s a Plan B just in case the referendum cannot be held’.
The document that people signed asks Catalonia’s political leaders to ‘do as much as they can, that they exhaust all of the paths open to a referendum’. And, in the event that a referendum cannot be held, it asks that they consider each signature as if it were a vote in favor of declaring independence.
The collection of signatures began several months ago in a pilot program, in order to establish the procedures that need to be followed in order for the votes to be valid and to create a network of authorized individuals who can validate the data of each person who signs. Now there are 3000 such authorized signature takers throughout Catalonia.