She has a degree in philosophy and a master’s in Catalan
Philology. Her professional life has
been in education; she’s written textbooks, books on language and literature,
and a dictionary. Involved in cultural
organizations, in 2012 she was elected president of the Catalan National
Assembly (ANC), a grassroots organization that had, at that time, 5,000 members
and was working for the right of Catalans to vote on a referendum on Catalan
independence.
That year, the ANC organized a demonstration in favor of
independence that took place in Barcelona on 11 September, Catalunya’s national
day, and 1.5 million people took part.
On 11 September 2013 the ANC organized the Via Catalana cap a la
Independencia, a human chain that stretched 480 kilometers (300 miles) from the
French border in the north to the Valencian border in the south. Thirty
thousand volunteers worked so that the 1.6 million people who came could
demonstrate in an organized and orderly manner.
On September 11, 2014, the ANC organized a demonstration in the form of
a V (for victory) on two major boulevards of Barcelona and 1.8 million people came. On 11 September 2015 the ANC organized the
Via Lliure, a demonstration that stretched along the 5.2 kilometers of the
Avinguda Meridiana in Barcelona and where 2 million people held up colored
cardboard cards, each color representing a value such as freedom or dignity.
Carme Forcadell stepped down from her position as president
of the ANC and a few months later was drafted to run on the coalition ticket
Junts pel Si (Together for Yes) at the last Catalan parliamentary elections
that took place on 27 September 2015.
Junts pel Si won 62 seats and Forcadell, being number two on the ticket,
became a member of the Catalan parliament.
On 26 October, Carme Forcadell was elected president of the
Catalan Parliament. In the short time
since then, the Junts pel Si coalition and the CUP, the other pro-independence
party that won 10 seats, giving pro-independence parties the majority of seats
in parliament, drafted a proposal that would begin the breakaway from Spain, to
be discussed at the first meeting this coming Monday, 9 November. The office of president of the Generalitat
(the Catalan government) will also be voted that day. Several opposing parties immediately took the
matter to the Spanish Constitutional Court, but the court, in an unusually wise
move, ruled that it could not impede a discussion in parliament.
When the matter is discussed and approved on Monday, it will
be interesting to see what happens next.
It is clear that the Constitutional Court will take a negative
action. And it is possible that the
Spanish government will accuse Forcadell of criminal activity for her
responsibility in bringing the proposal before the parliament. But one of the items in the breakaway
proposal says that the Spanish courts are not creditable and no longer have
jurisdiction over Catalunya.
The United States fought a war in order to achieve its
independence. Catalunya is trying to
achieve the same thing but without any violence.
