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How a new network changes the Catalan protest

2019-10-29T11:52:43.560Z


The Spanish police are chasing a protest group that could play a decisive role in the uprising in Catalonia. Thousands of young separatists organize themselves via the telegram channel "Tsunami Democrátic".



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The command comes at 11:57 clock: "Urgent call to the citizens of Barcelona, ​​now and today!" The message is pushed via the messenger app Telegram on hundreds of thousands mobile phone screens. "Today, the Spanish President visits Catalonia, let's make it clear: sit & talk" - sit down and talk! More than 400,000 people see the news.

An hour later, hundreds of Catalans, most of them teenagers or in their early twenties, are standing in front of the building housing the Spanish Central Government. The crowd chants: "Llibertat, presos polítics" - "Freedom for political prisoners."

Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez plays a cat and mouse game with the demonstrators this Monday. He always reveals his whereabouts only when he is already there. The delegation of the central government, in front of whose seat the Catalans await him, he does not visit in the end. Whether the spontaneous blockade was the reason remains uncertain. The protesters, however, strongly believe they celebrate Sánchez's absence as a victory.

The Telegram channel through which the calls have spread is called Tsunami Democràtic , a democratic tsunami. The platform is the latest organizational form of Catalan protest - and it is unlike anything the separatists have planned and carried out so far.

Instead of protests that have been announced for a long time, Tsunami Democràtic is making a kind of flash mob protest. Only a small group of initiates knows in advance about the actions. At the crucial moment, then comes the command to civil disobedience or demo, just in time, so that the separatists can be on time on-site.

Hundreds of thousands of followers in a few weeks

It is quite possible that this group will have a decisive influence on the next phase of the disturbances. The traditional methods, which is clear to most pro-independence activists, are considered to have failed after the verdict against Catalan activists and politicians. The Madrid Supreme Court had sentenced nine Catalan separatist leaders to long prison terms ranging from 9 to 13 years.

Who is behind Tsunami Democràtic is unclear. The Spanish police investigate and have already blocked the group's website. There's a Twitter account that does not follow anyone, plus an app that identifies you with a QR code that's only personally shared. The campaign has 200,000 followers on Twitter, 370,000 on Telegram, and more than 35,000 people downloaded the app and verified themselves.

"We ran like never before in life"

The tsunami commands are followed by people like Oriol, Ignasí, Andrea and Mónica, all between 21 and 25. They come from a village half an hour's drive south of the Catalan metropolis of Barcelona. They want Catalonia to become independent, they had committed themselves two years ago, when many Catalans voted on their own state in the illegal referendum.

Since then, their disappointment has grown - not only over the central government in Madrid, which insists on uniting with the state, but also about the Catalan politicians, who did not keep what they had promised.

Therefore, the friends wanted to protest when the ruling of the Supreme Court was pronounced in Madrid. On Monday two weeks ago, it was time. Oriol just came out of the lecture when he met Andrea, who informed him: she had received word via Twitter and Telegram that she should go to Barcelona airport to block him. Without hesitation, he had set off.

Since there was no way to get through the car, the two students walked almost two hours on the highway towards the airport. "There comes a message over Telegram, you do not know the sender, but thousands go there," says Oriol fascinated and a little surprised about himself.

This Monday two weeks ago, the friends have stirred up a lot. First, they were far away from the action, in the crowd in front of the entrances to the terminal. Then the police started to disperse the crowd. Andrea and Mónica were running, "as never before in life".

AP / Bernat Armangue

Protest at Barcelona Airport: "You do not know the sender, but thousands go there"

Within minutes, Oriol recounts, Ignasí and his little sister suddenly faced the policeman directly. In order to protect the girl, they would have inserted the beating with the batons. He's still limping, says Oriol. Since then, the friends were always at demonstrations here.

The unannounced protests at the airport recalled the actions of the youth in Hong Kong. Last Tuesday, a message from activists from the former Crown Colony circulated on the Internet. It was addressed to the "Fighters for the Freedom of Catalonia" and included recommendations such as "Do not let politicians lead your movement" or "If you do a special action, wear gloves and make sure all surveillance cameras are taped".

Peaceful and violent protests are just "two sides of the same coin," the message goes on: "If you give up either side, you lose." The final words: "Hong Kong is not China, Catalonia is not Spain." But many of the young protesters who have been so agitated seem to forget that Spain is not China.

Video

AP

So far, the tsunami Democratic three times called at short notice for peaceful protests. In addition, the network made sure that #SpainSitAndTalk on Twitter trendete. Unlike other well-known telegram channels that have emerged in recent weeks, the tsunami posts only when it's really important.

The activists use the vacuum in Catalan politics

The organizers of the Flashmob protests do not want to give personal interviews. Tsunami is a horizontal network that can change and adapt quickly, according to an e-mail to SPIEGEL. The absence of a leader has the advantage of allowing individual members to withdraw or take a short break without harming the organization.

With the App, the network apparently wants to use above all the opportunity to learn by location service the location of the users. As soon as enough people have registered, the organizers could initiate minor local protests within a very short time. The QR codes, which only pass from activist to activist, should prevent the app from being infiltrated.

The platform would never have found so many followers so fast if their accounts and websites had not been spread through the traditional separatist organizations and the most important separatist politicians. However, the parties and civic organizations that had previously determined the Catalan protest were merely informed of the general intentions of the tsunami, writes Tsunami Democràtic , not about concrete plans or actions.

Cal recuperar la iniciativa, i en tots els à mbits. Aquesta es una bona manera, intel·ligent. El compromís amb la no violència ens fa més forts, que ningú en tingui cap dubte. I sí, ara comença el temps de la represa. https://t.co/RNXvdkKKoi

- Carles Puigdemont (@KRLS) 2 September 2019

This coincides with Spanish press reports, after which probably some activists, who knew of previous actions, devised the tsunami . They used the vacuum that currently determines Catalan politics, as even the separatist parties disagree on what to do next.

The police are looking for days for the backers, the Spanish intelligence services are very efficient, the Minister of the Interior stressed: One will find the organizers. However, it is also unclear to what extent the tsunami has to do with the groups that have violently protested in Barcelona in recent days. Publicly, the group always calls to peacefulness.

According to media reports, investigators at the National Court in Madrid suspect that behind the scenes of the tsunami activists are pulling the strings that have previously driven the more radical protests of the Catalan uprising: the so-called CDR and the new, radical ones Separation ERT (Equipe for tactical counter-stroke). They rely on burning barricades and street battles with the police.

The only thing that is certain for now is that long-prepared mass demonstrations will not even impress the Catalans. Hundreds of thousands of supporters and opponents of independence demonstrated in Barcelona again this weekend. But the counter-march of the separatists came only about 350,000 Catalans, the lowest number of the last eight years.

The organizers of the tsunami used the demo mainly to distribute the QR codes, which can be verified in the app, to trustworthy demonstrators. The next major action is scheduled to take place on 9th November - the day before the Spanish parliamentary elections.

Source: spiegel

All news articles on 2019-10-29

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