Societat Civil Catalana

Societat Civil Catalana ("Catalan Civil Society", SCC by its Catalan acronym) is a Catalan civic society organization. According to its manifesto, they position themselves as a civil and political platform against the secession of Catalonia from Spain and to promote a stronger relationships between Catalonia and the rest of Spain.[1] Most of SCC initiatives aimed to oppose and counter the Catalan independence movement.[2][3][4][5] The organization was officially launched on 23 April 2014.[6]

Societat Civil Catalana
Former President of Spain and People's Party, Mariano Rajoy, receiving managers of SCC. From left to right: Óscar Uceda, Álex Ramos, Miriam Tey, José Rosiñol and Mariano Rajoy.
MottoJuntos y mejor ("Better, together")
FormationApril 7, 2014 (2014-04-07)
TypeNGO
Location
  • Carrer Còrsega 270, 3r 5ª,
    Barcelona
Area served
Catalonia
Official languages
Catalan, Spanish
President
Fernando Sánchez Costa
WebsiteOfficial website

Structure

Fernando Sánchez Costa is the current president, since June 26, 2019.[7][8]

Josep Ramon Bosch is the former president. He was appointed in January 2019 and this is his second term as president of SCC.[9] Other members of the current board are Álex Ramos, Manuel Miró and Xavier Marín.[9] Bosch replaced José Rosiñol, who was president since 2017. Former presidents have been Rafael Arenas, Mariano Gomà, and Josep Ramon Bosch.[10][11][12] Prior to serving as the first SCC president, Bosch had been founder and president of the unionist organisation Somatemps, which is widely deemed as far right. SCC board members have different ideological backgrounds and are or have been associated to pro-union parties such as People's Party of Catalonia, Citizens and Socialists' Party of Catalonia.[13] SCC has delegations in Barcelonès, Baix Llobregat and Tarragona.[14]

Creation

SCC was legally constituted on April 7, 2014. SCC stated that its goal is to be a transverse platform against separatism.[15] On April 23 of the same year SCC had its official presentation to the public at the Victoria Theater in Barcelona.[6][16] Susana Beltrán, who became a deputy of Citizens in Catalonia's Parliament,[17][18] was the host of the event and Bosch, Domingo and Coll delivered the keynote speeches.[6] José Rosiñol was the moderator and also member of the provisional executive office. Other members from the provisional executive office who also attended the event were Isabel Porcel, Ana María Lindin and Ferran Brunet.[19] The event was attended by members of mainstream political parties with representation in the Spanish parliament such as PP, Citizens, PSC and UPyD[6] Some founding members were members of the Somatemps, including its first president Josep Ramon Bosch, Javier Barraycoa, Josep Alsina and Xavier Codorniu.[20][21][22][23] SCC also received support from Jorge Moragas and Miram Tey.[24]

Awards

Activism
  • On 11 September 2014 (National Day of Catalonia) it organized its first big concentration event in Tarragona.[32]
  • On 12 October 2014 (Día de la Hispanidad), gathering 40,000 demonstrators in Barcelona against independence, according to the local police spokesman.[4][5]
  • On 8 October 2017, it mobilized hundreds of thousands of people (350,000 according to local police chief of press, more than 1 million according to the organization itself) in a demonstration at Barcelona. Former EU Parliament president and current Foreign Affairs Minister, socialist Josep Borrell, and Nobel Award Laureate Mario Vargas Llosa, delivered closing speeches at the demonstration.[33]
  • On 12 October 2017, a total of 65,000 people attended to a demonstration call made by SCC.[34]
  • On 29 October 2017, 300,000 people according to local police (one million according to SCC) marched against the unilateral declaration of independence by the Catalan Regional Government.[35] Manifesto speakers were Josep Borrell[36] and Francisco Frutos, former leader of the Spanish Communist Party which condemned his participation in the demonstration and stated that he did not represent them in any way.[37][38][39]
  • On 5 December 2017, SCC denounces in Brussels an alleged indoctrination in schools of Catalonia in Catalan nationalism.[40] Contrary to the beliefs of Spanish nationalism and related entities such as SCC, studies show that the national identity is influenced by parents and neighbours, not the education system.[41]
  • On 18 March 2018, 7,000 people were present in another demonstration.[42] In this demonstration, former French Prime Minister Manuel Valls delivered the closing speech.[43]

SCC demonstration calls have received cross-party support from Catalonia's Popular Party, PSC and Citizens[44][45][46] and it is regarded by some as the leading anti-independence platforms in Catalonia along with the movement for Tabarnia.[47]

SCC gave public support to a demonstration of the platform Tabarnia along with Vox and PxC.[48][47][49][50][51]

In the first months of 2018 SCC started a round of meetings with Spanish politicians and political parties to discuss how to manage the Catalan independence movement in the context of the Spanish constitutional crisis. SCC established conversations with political party Cs (Citizens) and with the president of the government of Spain, Mariano Rajoy (president of People's Party).[52][53] The organization also met with Susana Díaz, president of Andalusia and PSOE-A,[54][55] and with Alberto Núñez Feijóo, president of Galicia and galician People's Party. Political parties En Marea and BNG were left out.[56] In April, representatives of SCC met the leader of the Spanish socialist party PSOE Pedro Sanchez.[57]

First proposed by Miriam Tey, Catalan Civil Society and Josep Ramon Bosch have formed a working group in order to negotiate with Manuel Valls his presentation to 2019 Spain's local elections as a Citizen's candidate.[58][59]

Catalan Civil Society went to the European Parliament to claim that in Catalonia there is linguistic discrimination and that children rights are being violated. They also claimed the existence negative effects in children academic performance due to using Catalan as tuition language in the Catalan education system. This belief is aligned with the rhetoric used by Spanish nationalism.[60][41] Republican Left of Catalonia MEP Josep Maria Terricabras recalled that PISA report does not show any difference,[61] as is the case of the last PISA report, Spanish regional tests and university admission tests.[62]

Criticism

Journalists have pointed out that some of the founding members of Societat Civil Catalana were members of various far-right organizations,[22] especially Somatemps.[23][21][63] Members like Josep Ramon Bosch,[23][64][65][66] Xavier Codorniu,[22][67] José Domingo,[68] Ferran Brunet[16][69] and Joaquim Coll[70][71] have attended or taken part in events related to far-right political entities like Somatemps, PxC, Vox, National Francisco Franco Foundation, National Democracy and Republican Social Movement.[66][68][69] Furthermore, violent neo-nazi groups have been known to participate in some demonstrations organized by the SCC. The SCC denounces violence and claims it cannot strictly control who participates in their demonstrations.[72] In January 2019, a court of law in Barcelona ordered several Catalan associations and prominent politicians to pay a 15,000 euro fine for a manifesto published in 2015 which accused SCC of having ties to Nazism and the extreme right.[73][74][74] The court also ruled that the defendants should stop making similar defamatory accusations in the future.[73]

In 2015, while Josep Ramon Bosch was president of the SCC, Catalan separatist parties ERC and CiU, together with the Catalan Green party ICV, sent a formal letter to Sylvie Gillaume, then vice-president of the European Parliament, protesting the granting of European Citizen's Price to Societat Civil Catalana. In the letter, they argued that the SCC has links with the Catalan far-right and promotes xenophobe and extremist ideas. SCC received the award in February 2015, triggering another protest letter. Gillaume dismissed this second letter, underlining that the award had already passed two courts: one Spanish and one communitarian in which deputies from PP, PSOE, and UPyD participated. European deputies from PSOE and PP were decisive in the rebuttal of the accusations. The Catalan Parliament accepted a proposal from ICV to lodge a complaint to the European Parliament. PP, PSC and Citizens voted against the proposal, while ICV-EUiA, ERC, CUP and CiU supported the measure.[17][75][76]

Societat Civil Catalana has been criticised by Javier Barraycoa, former member of SCC and founder of Somatemps,[77][78] of receiving funds from the central government of Spain in order to organize the demonstrations of the 8th and 12 October 2017.[79][80] RENFE subsidized 50% of the cost of 245 train tickets for the Diada public act of SCC on September 11, 2014 in Tarragona.[32] Josep Alsina from Somatemps reported that SCC receives generous donations through Joan Boscà Foundation to which many important Catalan businesses give money.[65]

According to the Spanish online newspaper Publico, the balance sheet presented by SCC lacks transparency. With only 75 members and 4,000 collaborators SCC managed to gather one million euros in 2014.[32] The members only account for 1.5% of money contributions. Another 1.5% comes from gathering posts and urns. The rest, 97%, comes from private donations. Audits have found no indication of wrongdoing. Félix Revuelta, founder and principal stakeholder of Naturhouse, stated that he and many other businessmen give support to the SCC.

gollark: And someone's probably been banned for something not even against the rules-as-written-in-one-sentence or rules-as-TJ09d.
gollark: It's crazy.
gollark: Oh, hey, someone asked for a 2G prizekin and has a copper up! I would be happy except it's not green!
gollark: Just did.
gollark: Fine, mods *collectively* are inconsistent and *many* mods are crazy.

See also

References
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  2. "Premi a l'anticatalanisme". El Temps (in Catalan). Retrieved 2018-05-13.
  3. Bou, Carles Planas (2018-04-22). "El 'procés' se internacionaliza en Alemania". elperiodico (in Spanish). Retrieved 2018-05-22.
  4. Barcelona, AFP in (2014-10-12). "Thousands rally in Barcelona against Catalonian independence". the Guardian. Retrieved 2018-02-02.
  5. "Miles de personas participan en la manifestación del 12O en plaza Catalunya en Barcelona". La Vanguardia. Retrieved 2018-03-19.
  6. "Sociedad Civil Catalana llena en su presentación en Barcelona". Cronica global (in Spanish). Retrieved 2018-05-10.
  7. "Sánchez Costa, nuevo presidente de Societat Civil Catalana". elperiodico.com (in Spanish). Retrieved 2020-02-04.
  8. SCC (2019-06-27). "Fernando Sánchez Costa se convierte en el nuevo presidente de Societat Civil Catalana". Societat Civil Catalana (in Spanish). Retrieved 2020-02-14.
  9. "Josep Ramon Bosch se convierte en el nuevo presidente de Societat Civil Catalana".
  10. "L'arquitecte Mariano Gomà, nou president de Societat Civil Catalana". Ara.cat (in Catalan). Retrieved 2018-03-29.
  11. Món, El. "José Rosiñol, nou president de Societat Civil Catalana". El Món. Retrieved 2018-03-29.
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  36. Regué, Júlia (2017-10-29). "El 'no' a la independencia vuelve a mostrar músculo en Barcelona". elperiodico (in Spanish). Retrieved 2018-04-13.
  37. "El PCE critica a su ex secretario general Paco Frutos por participar en la marcha por la unidad de España". Elmundo (in Spanish). Retrieved 2018-11-21.
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  40. Sánchez, Álvaro (2017-12-05). "Societat Civil Catalana denuncia en Bruselas el adoctrinamiento en las escuelas de Cataluña". El País (in Spanish). ISSN 1134-6582. Retrieved 2018-09-11.
  41. Wong, Alia (2017-11-03). "Is Catalonia Using Schools as a Political Weapon?". The Atlantic. Retrieved 2018-09-11.
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  47. "Ciudadanos se aleja de Tabarnia: el partido que dio cancha a la "broma" ahora se desmarca". eldiario.es (in Spanish). Retrieved 2018-04-13.
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  58. "'Operación Manuel Valls', el proyecto secreto para derrotar al populismo y el independentismo". Elmundo (in Spanish). Retrieved 2018-07-19. «¿Por qué no le invitamos a un acto y lo convertimos en un puntal contra el separatismo?», se pregunta Tey. Comparte esa impresión con otros cargos de SCC y deciden iniciar los trámites para traerle a España.
  59. "Josep Ramon Bosch asesora a Manuel Valls". ElNacional.cat (in Spanish). Retrieved 2018-07-19. Josep Ramon Bosch i Codina es el factótum encargado de convencer a Manuel Valls para que encabece la lista "constitucionalista" por Barcelona en las municipales del 2019.
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  64. Món, El. "SCC convoca una manifestació en defensa de la bandera espanyola a Sabadell". El Món. Retrieved 2018-05-10.
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  66. NacióDigital. "Societat Civil reconeix que Bosch va assistir a un acte de la Fundació Franco" (in Catalan). Retrieved 2018-03-31.
  67. "Un fundador de SCC va cridar lemes franquistes davant de la seu d'ERC durant una concentració ultra". El Temps (in Catalan). Retrieved 2018-05-10.
  68. "Jordi Borràs posa en evidència José Domingo, secretari de SCC". VilaWeb.cat (in Catalan). Retrieved 2018-03-29.
  69. Cazorla, Bertran (2014-11-08). "Exposen una revista negacionista en un centre cívic de Barcelona durant un acte de Somatemps". Directa (in Catalan). Retrieved 2018-03-31.
  70. del Pueblo, Las Voces (2014-07-26). "Orella considera de "suicida" no responder con medidas contundentes y definitivas a la amenaza separatista en Cataluña". Las Voces del Pueblo. Archived from the original on 2018-04-25.
  71. del Pueblo, Las Voces (2014-07-26). "Somatemps (Historiadores Debaten Sobre "El Futuro de Cataluña")". YouTube. Archived from the original on 2017-09-27.
  72. "La extrema derecha aprovecha el conflicto catalán para reactivarse". eldiario.es (in Spanish). Retrieved 2018-09-10. ¿Quiénes han sido los agresores? En algunos casos la Policía los ha identificado con entidades de la extrema derecha, que han participado activamente en las marchas constitucionalistas organizadas por Sociedad Civil Catalana (SCC). Pero no todos responden al perfil clásico de neonazi. Desde esta asociación se desmarcan y condenan estos sucesos. Reconocen, además, que no pueden controlarlos.
  73. Periódico, El (2019-01-10). "Condenan a varias entidades por vulnerar el derecho al honor de Societat Civil Catalana". elperiodico (in Spanish). Retrieved 2019-02-01.
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  78. Barraycoa, Javier (2014-04-22). "Emerge la Cataluña silenciada". Elmundo (in Spanish). Retrieved 2018-04-01.
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