GAT commandos: this is how sovereignty prepares the new 'guardians' of the republic

The Catalan independence movement is reorganized for the next political course after the elections, where the prospects are negative. This Tuesday, the Moviment per la Independència (MxI) platform held an event at the emblematic Ateneu de Barcelona to prepare the Second Conference for the Own State, which it intends to hold at the end of September and whose closure is scheduled for the 30th of that month. one day before the anniversary of the illegal referendum. In this conference, where the main pro-sovereignty movements will participate, a roadmap for secession will be established that wants to involve all political and social actors in favor of independence.. It should be noted that the First Conference took place in 2011 and led to the birth of the Catalan National Assembly (ANC) as the main actor of the independence movement. Now, this second conference wants to terminate the ANC and exchange it for another instrument. Or, at least, change your strategy and convert it into another incentive that shakes the streets again.

The MxI road map, to which El Confidencial has had access, highlights that “the nine pardoned political prisoners are incapable of maintaining their political activity on the front line.”. He asks them for “political responsibilities”, while praising the strategy of “exile” from which they chose to leave, including Carles Puigdemont. He advocates once again “showing the strength of popular support on the street, both in massive demonstrations and in spectacular actions that have a worldwide echo”. These mobilizations “must be very well planned actions, with clear messages and that have the recognition and acceptance of the majority of society”.

The new agitation actors will no longer be the ANC or Òmnium Cultural. Not even the defense committees of the republic (CDR). They will be the Grups d'Acció Territorial (GAT), a kind of territory control squads or commandos, a kind of guardians of the revolution that will assume powers of control and defense of the territory and the population. These are, the roadmap details, specialized groups “which, on the one hand, must develop the corresponding strategy and carry out training and preparation in the methods of nonviolent struggle and, on the other, identify the neuralgic points of the country that have to be occupied and protected, in any circumstance, from the very moment of the establishment of the Catalan Republic in its own territory”. The document considers the GATs a key and essential piece “in the process of reaching the establishment of the Republic” and also “will be the basis of its subsequent defense, once proclaimed, without having to cede this function to a professional army”..

Colonize public spaces

The GATs will be structured, the document states, “as a Catalan Civilian Nonviolent Defense system” and will be decisive for the international recognition of the new Republic in terms of security and defense.. In the field of street mobilizations, the roadmap stresses that it is necessary to “turn them into acts to initiate and promote campaigns of nonviolent struggle, non-cooperation, disobedience, construction of sovereignties… that touch pillars of power, such as those announced in projects 5 and 6”.

These projects refer to the colonization of public spaces and permanent mobilizations “that promote the presence on roads and streets of our towns and cities of flags, shields, banners, slogans and all kinds of symbols, both in public and private spaces that make the disconnection of Catalonia and its distancing from the Spanish State is evident”. It also refers to “special mobilizations”, in “very well planned” actions that may “disturb the normal functioning of the city, neighborhood or affected population”. The territorial structure of the ANC would be fundamental in this type of actions.

Because the prominence of the GATs does not mean that the current pro-independence structures are underestimated. “The ANC, the local councils of the Republic, the Association of Municipalities for Independence, the CDRs and others of a sectoral or territorial nature will take a greater role in the new stage, in which greater specialization and discretion are required.. In most projects, the territorial structure of the ANC, local councils and Òmnium will constitute the best basis for their development. In many of these projects, the sectoral structure of the ANC must have a leading role that until now it has not been able to have”. At the same time, “Òmnium, the Platform for the Language, the CAL (Coordinadora d'Associacions per la Lengua Catalana), the Ens de l'Associacionisme Cultural and many of the federations that are linked, present throughout the country, can be essential pieces to carry out some projects and are the gateway to reach thousands of people with proposals for actions derived from each project”. The same can be said of economic organizations, such as Chambers of Commerce, employers' associations, the Círculo de Economía or private entities.. “They are fundamental pieces in decisive moments,” he stresses, so they will have to be added to the movement.

assault on institutions

The roadmap foresees actions and major campaigns such as “the discredit of the Spanish state in the international arena, the promotion of a discourse of Spanish national defeat of the Ggeneration of '98 type, coordination, at the state level, with other republican forces, the possible cracks legal entities to open debates on topics such as amnesty, self-determination or monarchy…”. To comply with this, it has the experience acquired, the judgments of courts of other States denying extraditions or of international courts contrary to Spain and the multiplication of “country tools”, such as the assault on institutions, be it the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce , unions, universities, cultural entities, sports clubs, etc.. The international resolutions against Spain, he points out, must be “one more element within the strategy of recognition of the democratic right to establish the new State”.

A key point is the “practical use” of the concept of “objectively identifiable group” to accuse Spain of attacking an ethnic minority group. Thus, he promises “a permanent campaign against the unsupportive and Jacobin neocentralism of the power of Madrid” and the possibility of establishing a “Catalan digital currency” that is not based “on a speculative cryptocurrency that leaves its value drifting in the markets.” the countries that adopt it.

For the new movement, it is necessary to strengthen the role of the Consell de la República, the court body chaired by Carles Puigdemont. The Consell is used as a body that represents “the continuity of the Catalan Republic proclaimed on October 27, 2017 in the Parliament of Catalonia”. Its role will be the “representation and international projection of the Catalan Republic in exile, the construction of the institutional structure of the new Republic”. Its strength is that it is outside of Spain.

The MxI considers that “we come from almost 6 years of disenchantment, of collective frustration and only a solid and realistic project can make the strength of the people [which was the motto of the great mobilizations of the past] return to being the engine we need ”. He recognizes that “the independence movement, today, is fragmented and, in general, disoriented”. Does not provide for a new organization to replace ANC and Òmnium. “What is needed is a shared roadmap accepted by all and a coordination tool that ensures maximum effectiveness”. The role of the MxI is to be “a flexible structure, without permanently visible heads, designed to define and execute the different projects that have to generate the conditions to establish the Catalan Republic and maintain it until it obtains international recognition”.

This platform is reactivated with this Second National Conference for the Own State, which will also elect a leadership made up of a maximum of 9 leaders. Each one will have 3 representatives under their command who will be integrated into a Permanent Commission, which will control the operation of the entity.. For “security reasons”, each member of that commission must designate a person to replace him “if necessary, especially if the holders are unable to continue exercising their responsibility due to the effects of State repression, which will intensify as the advance the process of establishment of the Republic”.

This platform points out in a letter that “this new country roadmap makes it clear that the main role corresponds, now more than ever, to organized civil society and that the two arms of the movement -parties and Consell de la República- have to act in accordance with the general strategy agreed upon by the movement as a whole. When we talk about organized civil society, we are not referring to the ANC or Òmnium, the two key pieces of the first stage, but to a new structure of fronts and projects that is proposed in the draft roadmap and that represent a new way organization much more adequate to face the repression that the Spanish state will intensify to the extent that the independence movement once again takes the initiative”.

Among the promoters of this strategy is Jaume Marfany, who had been vice president of the ANC between 2013 and 2015 and had been at the top of the organization since 2012.. In a reflection written on June 1, he pointed out that the highlight of the latest municipal elections is the resounding slap of the electorate to the pro-independence parties. Marfany criticizes that the ANC's strategy goes through the so-called civic list. “The president [Dolors Feliu] and Uriel Bertran [the right hand of the ANC leader] have been doing a whole series of acts for months with the sole objective of selling the excellence of the civic list. The strategy is accompanied by a direct confrontation with all the pro-independence parties and the threat of presenting this list in competition with the other pro-independence lists that are presented in the next elections to Parliament”. That, he says, “is the antithesis of what the ANC should be and why it was created. It is the antithesis of transversality (…) It turns the ANC into an organization that fragments and divides the independence movement”. Marfany points out that the ANC has lost thousands of members in recent months and that in the vote on its roadmap there was 97.5% abstention. Therefore, “a deep reflection is urgently needed from the main representatives of the independence movement.”