Ramon Cotarelo, a Professor of Political Sciences at
Madrid-based Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distanci, UNED
(Spain's distance learning public university), was in charge of
presenting Monday evening’s event in Madrid. He started by introducing
himself as a Madrid and Spanish citizen but defended "the Catalans’right
to decide" on their own future, which is to say the consultation vote.
Cotarelo explained that Spain should accept the democratic result of
this process. He then added that it is “an honour” being able to share
his views on the matter in such an event.
“A country cannot be permanently focused on an
identity matter” stated Cotalero, adding that “the problem of Spanish
nationalism is not the Spanish nation, but Spanish nationalists”.
Cotarelo considered that if Catalans do not give up to their
independence claims, “it would be so terrible for Spanish nationalists
they would not accept the breakup. They have a problem with evil”, he
stated. Finally, Cotarelo said that the will to impose a single idea of
what is Spain “is what ultimately caused the living-togetherness
problems”.
During his speech, Súmate’s President Eduardo Reyes
said that the citizens would be the ones driving forward the
independence process, since “we are tired of these ministers and of this
[Spanish] government which is unintelligent, greedy, with crooks and
thieves”. The President of the organisation acknowledged that the
“Spanish people is being massacred just like us”, stating that “we
should all be united against those who are taking advantage of us”.
Súmate members regretted that Spanish institutions
follow a strategy to delay the consultation vote but added that such a
vote was the only way out of the current situation. They therefore
requested the help of the Spanish society in order to encourage the
economic and political power to end “this delay because it will only
lead to a deadlock”.
The event was attended by a hundred people and
several MPs, notably Catalans living in Madrid, including politicians
from the Left-Wing Catalan Independence (ERC) or the Centre-Right
Catalan Nationalist Coalition (CiU). Aside from Súmate President Eduardo
Reyes, the Spokesperson for Súmate in Tarragona (Southern Catalonia),
Nicolás Fernández, and other members of the organisation, such as Carlos
Treviño, Manolo Ortega or José Rodríguez, have also attended the event.
Ironically, no Madrid-based printed media covered the event.
