Page:Declaration of sovereignty and of the right to decide of the people of Catalonia.pdf/2

 1714, following the War of Succession, lead to the Decree of Nova Planta of King Philip V, which abolished Catalan public law and the Catalan institutions of self-government.

This historical path has been shared with other territories, thereby creating a common linguistic, cultural, social and economic area, which is destined to be reinforced and promoted on the basis of mutual recognition.

Throughout the 20th century, Catalans were consistently committed to self-government. The creation of the Mancomunitat de Catalunya in 1914 was the first step in the recovery of self-government, later abolished under the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera. With the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic in 1931, a Catalan government was formed under the name of Generalitat of Catalonia, with a Statute of Autonomy.

The Generalitat was abolished in 1939 by General Franco, who established a dictatorship that lasted until 1975. This dictatorship faced an active resistance of the people and the Government of Catalonia. One of the highlights of the struggle for freedom was the creation of the Assembly of Catalonia (Assemblea de Catalunya) in 1971, before the reestablishment of the Generalitat in 1977, on a provisional basis, with the return of its president-in-exile. During the transition to democracy, and in the framework of the new system of autonomous communities defined by the Spanish Constitution of 1978, the people of Catalonia approved the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia by referendum in 1979 and held its first elections to the Parliament of Catalonia in 1980.

In recent years, with a view to deepening democracy, a majority of Catalan political and social forces promoted actions to transform the political and legal framework. The most recent effort was the process of reform of the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia initiated by the Catalan Parliament in 2005. The impediments and refusals by the institutions of the Spanish State, especially Sentence 31/2010 of the Spanish Constitutional Court, lead to a radical rejection of the democratic evolution of the collective will of the Catalan people within the Spanish State and lay the foundations for a retrogression in self-government, which is very apparent today in the political, jurisdictional, financial, social, cultural and linguistic fields.

The people of Catalonia has expressed in various ways its willingness to overcome the current impasse within the Spanish State. Mass demonstrations on 10 July 2010, under the slogan "We are a nation. We decide", and on 11 September 2012, under the slogan "Catalonia, new State in Europe", express the citizens' rejection of the lack of respect for the decisions of the people of Catalonia.

On 27 September 2012, by means of Resolution 742/IX, the Parliament of Catalonia noted the need for the people of Catalonia to be consulted in order to freely and democratically determine its collective future. The recent parliamentary elections in Catalonia, held on 25 November 2012, clearly and unambiguously expressed and confirmed this willingness.

With a view to carrying out this process, the Parliament of Catalonia, meeting at the beginning of the tenth parliamentary term, representing the will of the citizens of Catalonia as expressed democratically in the last election, adopts the following:

In accordance with the will democratically expressed by the majority of the people of Catalonia, the Parliament of Catalonia agrees to initiate the process to exercise the right to decide so that the citizens of Catalonia may decide their collective political future in accordance with the following principles: