Sovereign Days

Abstract

This chapter argues that in the wake of the 2017 referendum on Catalan sovereignty, the imagined community of the nation became concretely manifest in neighborhood communities of solidarity. The referendum, known by its numeronym 1-O (for 1-October), produced a continuing grassroot mobilization that was rooted in the experience of solidarity that so many people went through on that day. Indeed, for the neighborhood of Gavó, many residents claim that the intimacy that they felt on that day and continue to share with their fellow neighbors has no parallel to any previous electoral process. Moreover, that experience of continuing solidarity rooted in the 1-O informs the way they perceive self-determination and imagine the Catalan Republic. The chapter then explores what sense is made of notions such as republic and sovereignty through processes of self-organization during the 1-O and subsequently through the Committee for the Defense of the Republic (CDR) in Gavó. In so doing, it demonstrates how the CDR's understanding of sovereignty and independence seeks to transcend the mere formation of a new state.