CATALONIA -- Òmnium announces "Catalans want to vote" campaign featuring human towers - VilaWeb

Òmnium announces "Catalans want to vote" campaign featuring human towers - VilaWeb:

Òmnium announces "Catalans want to vote" campaign featuring human towers

The plan is to build Catalan human towers in seven European capitals: Paris, Brussels, London, Lisbon, Geneva, Berlin, and Barcelona

 

Human towers are one of Catalonia's most striking and unusual
cultural activities. Teams with hundreds of participants—sometimes as
many as a thousand—construct carefully coordinated layers of people,
eight, nine, even ten stories high, called "castells" or castles.
Catalan human tower building involves every part of society, from huge
burly weight lifters in the base to small children at the top, with
everything in between, including the crowd that often lends support, and
as such has come to symbolize the enormously significant social
cohesion that characterizes Catalan society.

Òmnium is organizing
the human towers in seven European capitals—Paris, Brussels, London,
Lisbon, Geneva, Berlin, and Barcelona—on the same day, June 8th, to call
attention to Catalonia's desire to vote on a referendum for its
independence on November 9, 2014. It has opened a crowdfunding page to support the effort and explains that,

The “Catalans want to vote. Human towers for democracy” project wants
each and every one of us to speak out from the bottom of our hearts for
democracy. We want our voice to be heard in Europe and the rest of the
world through the Human Towers and what they represent telling the whole
wide world that the Catalan people want to democratically decide their
future as a nation.

Òmnium Cultural was founded in 1961 in order to promote the Catalan
language and spread Catalan culture at a time when both were forbidden
by Franco's dictatorial regime in Spain. The group has more than 38,000
members and is a prominent civil group supporting Catalan independence.

 

 

Castellers de la Vila de Gràcia. Photo: Liz Castro