President calls for ‘loud and clear’ message from Catalan public

Ousted Catalan president Carles Puigdemont insisted on Friday that neither “bars nor exile” can dissuade the Catalan public from “wanting to make possible what the majority of people can do around the world, which is freely decide their future, and to do so at the ballot box.”

In a message from Belgium, the president called for Saturday’s demonstration in Barcelona to be “a united call, loud and clear” in favor of “freedom and democracy”. “We have to once again make ourselves heard, so that the world hears these plural voices,” he said.

The Catalan president also had a message for the Spanish authorities. “This cannot continue in the European Union,” he said, reiterating his call for the Catalan public to be given the chance to vote: “Not with violence, not with repression, not with prosecutors, not with judges, not with authoritarian or imposed governments, but rather through the ballot box,” he said.

Puigdemont once again called on the EU to stop “looking the other way” and appealed to “all the democrats of the world” to take note of the Catalan public’s demands: “No doubt those of us in Brussels or those of us in prison will hear your call tomorrow,” he concluded.