Small far-left party agitates for Catalan independence

[caption id="attachment_193863" align="alignnone" width="960"] Tourists with umbrellas walk in the rain outside the Generalitat Palace (Catalan government headquarters) in Barcelona on October 19, 2017./ AFP / Pau Barrena/[/caption] by Laurence Boutreux Agence France-Presse MADRID, Spain - A far-left party which holds the balance of power in Catalonia's parliament is using its influence to push for an immediate declaration of independence and launch a campaign of civil disobedience. With Spain threatening to seize some of the pro-independence Catalan government's powers, the Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP) party has deployed its preferred weapon: street agitation. The staunchly separatist and anti-capitalist party has called for protesters to gather Thursday outside central government representative offices across Catalonia. They want an end to "repression" and the release of two leaders of influential grassroots pro-independence organisations who were jailed while they are investigated for alleged sedition. Mar Ampurdanes, spokeswoman for Arran, a youth group linked to the CUP, on Wednesday called for "massive non-violent disobedience." The CUP has for months pressed Catalan president Carles Puigdemont to take a hardline stance in the push for independence. His separatist coalition lacks a majority in the 135-seat Catalan regional parliament and relies on the CUP's 10 seats to pass legislation and advance his independence "roadmap." Puigdemont angered the CUP last week when he issued a cryptic "suspended" declaration of independence following a contested October 1 separatist referendum, saying he wanted time for talks with the government. "Negotiate with who? A Spanish state that continues to threaten and persecute us?" replied Anna Gabriel, the spokeswoman of the CUP in the Catalan parliament. [caption id="attachment_193862" align="alignnone" width="960"] A person holds an umbrella with a text reading in French "Tricked again!" outside the Generalitat Palace (Catalan government headquarters) in Barcelona on October 19, 2017./ AFP / Pau Barrena/[/caption] 'International issue' During the last regional elections in Catalonia in September 2015 the CUP's slogan was "we go slow because we go far." It also ran a humorous ad that depicted the separatist movement as a broken-down van that only moves forward when dozens of citizens push it. The party captured over 336,000 votes, or 8.2 percent of the total, giving it 10 seats in parliament and turning it into a kingmaker. The CUP wrote to Puigdemont recently to say that a declaration of independence is "necessary" given the mandate the regional government was given by two million voters during the referendum, which was marred by a police crackdown on voting. Final results from the referendum suggest 90 percent of voters backed independence, although only 43 percent of Catalan voters turned out. "No" voters largely boycotted the ballot deemed illegal by Spain's central government. For the CUP, Catalonia will only be able to negotiate with Spain on an equal footing after it has declared independence. "By making ourselves a republic, it's a question of no longer being just an internal problem of the Spanish state but converting ourselves into an international issue," CUP member of parliament Albert Botran, 33, told AFP. "If we don't, the international community will continue to afford the luxury of ignoring us." 'More tension' Joan Subirats, a politics professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, says "the CUP believes that the Spanish government will be under greater pressure to find a solution if more tension is created, more economic problems, if there is more worry in Europe." It has already proven that it cannot be ignored by Catalonia's conservative separatists. The CUP proved its kingmaker powers at the beginning of 2016 when it forced the ouster of Artur Mas, a conservative, as the head of the Catalan regional government. It resented his austerity policies and graft scandals tainting his party. "Mas was thrown in the dustbin of history," one top CUP member said after Mas was replaced by Puigdemont, a lifelong separatist from a modest background. Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy warned in a recent speech that Catalan policy was being "determined" by "radicals and extremists". Growth in crisis Born in the 1980s, the CUP was initially focused on municipal politics. Spain's economic crisis and graft scandals that have tainted the country's traditional parties helped it grow in recent years. Like Spain's far-left party Podemos, the CUP calls for greater social spending and blasts Spain -- ruled since 2011 by conservative Rajoy -- as a "second-rate" democracy. But unlike Podemos it considers independence as the best way to achieve change. "We are not at all nationalists," Gabriel, the CUP parliamentary spokeswoman, said in January. "We need to break with this state to change everything" and "work for social justice," she added. CUP activists are behind many of the "committees to defend the referendum" which are ready to take to the streets at any moment to push for independence. Their slogan is: "Not a step back, Republic now."