gerry adams

Dilma Rousseff, Yoko Ono, Ai Wei Wei, and five Nobel prize winners among supporters

Sinn Féin’s leader, Gerry Adams, praised “the peaceful and democratic nature” of Catalonia’s pro-independence aspirations and applauded the “positivity of the campaign” to call a referendum. “That’s a matter of the people there to strategize on, but certainly the right to a referendum is a very modest and very simple demand and it's one which the parties in government have been mandated to do,” he told the CNA. Thus, he called on the Spanish Government “to do the right thing” and lamented some of their recent actions, especially the prosecution of the Parliament’s President, Carme Forcadell and other Catalan officials “for doing their job”. Adams met with Catalan Minister for Foreign Affairs, Raül Romeva, this Wednesday in the Irish Parliament and reaffirmed his “sympathy” for Catalonia’s political aspirations and praised the “bonds” between the two communities.

International personalities such as Nobel Peace Prize Rigoberta Menchú, Sinn Féin’s Gerry Adams or US actor Viggo Mortensen have joined the ‘Let Catalans vote’ manifesto. The document, first published in 2014, supports the Catalans’ “democratic right to vote on their political future” and warns that “preventing Catalans from voting seems to contradict the principles that inspire democratic societies”. The manifesto now boasts 40 signatures, including Nobel Peace Laureate Ahmed Galai, vice-president of the Tunisian League for Human Rights and a member of the National Quartet Dialogue;South African archbishop and Nobel Peace Laureate, Desmond Tutu; and American linguist Noam Chomsky, among others.