Societat Civil Catalana


Societat Civil Catalana is a Catalan civic society organization. According to its manifesto, they position themselves as a civil and political platform against the secession of Catalonia from Spain and to promote a stronger relationships between Catalonia and the rest of Spain. Most of SCC initiatives aimed to oppose and counter the Catalan independence movement. The organization was officially launched on 23 April 2014.

Structure

Fernando Sánchez Costa is the current president, since June 26, 2019.
Josep Ramon Bosch is the former president. He was appointed in January 2019 and this is his second term as president of SCC. Other members of the current board are Álex Ramos, Manuel Miró and Xavier Marín. Bosch replaced José Rosiñol, who was president since 2017. Former presidents have been Rafael Arenas, Mariano Gomà, and Josep Ramon Bosch. Prior to serving as the first SCC president, Bosch had been founder and president of the unionist organisation Somatemps, which is widely deemed as far right. SCC board members have different ideological backgrounds and are or have been associated to pro-union parties such as People's Party of Catalonia, Citizens and Socialists' Party of Catalonia. SCC has delegations in Barcelonès, Baix Llobregat and Tarragona.

Creation

SCC was legally constituted on April 7, 2014. SCC stated that its goal is to be a transverse platform against separatism. On April 23 of the same year SCC had its official presentation to the public at the Victoria Theater in Barcelona. Susana Beltrán, who became a deputy of Citizens in Catalonia's Parliament, was the host of the event and Bosch, Domingo and Coll delivered the keynote speeches. José Rosiñol was the moderator and also member of the provisional executive office. Other members from the provisional executive office who also attended the event were Isabel Porcel, Ana María Lindin and Ferran Brunet. The event was attended by members of mainstream political parties with representation in the Spanish parliament such as PP, Citizens, PSC and UPyD Some founding members were members of the Somatemps, including its first president Josep Ramon Bosch, Javier Barraycoa, Josep Alsina and Xavier Codorniu. SCC also received support from Jorge Moragas and Miram Tey.

Awards

SCC demonstration calls have received cross-party support from Catalonia's Popular Party, PSC and Citizens and it is regarded by some as the leading anti-independence platforms in Catalonia along with the movement for Tabarnia.
SCC gave public support to a demonstration of the platform Tabarnia along with Vox and PxC.
In the first months of 2018 SCC started a round of meetings with Spanish politicians and political parties to discuss how to manage the Catalan independence movement in the context of the Spanish constitutional crisis. SCC established conversations with political party Cs and with the president of the government of Spain, Mariano Rajoy. The organization also met with Susana Díaz, president of Andalusia and PSOE-A, and with Alberto Núñez Feijóo, president of Galicia and galician People's Party. Political parties En Marea and BNG were left out. In April, representatives of SCC met the leader of the Spanish socialist party PSOE Pedro Sanchez.
First proposed by Miriam Tey, Catalan Civil Society and Josep Ramon Bosch have formed a working group in order to negotiate with Manuel Valls his presentation to 2019 Spain's local elections as a Citizen's candidate.
Catalan Civil Society went to the European Parliament to claim that in Catalonia there is linguistic discrimination and that children rights are being violated. They also claimed the existence negative effects in children academic performance due to using Catalan as tuition language in the Catalan education system. This belief is aligned with the rhetoric used by Spanish nationalism. Republican Left of Catalonia MEP Josep Maria Terricabras recalled that PISA report does not show any difference, as is the case of the last PISA report, Spanish regional tests and university admission tests.

Criticism

Journalists have pointed out that some of the founding members of Societat Civil Catalana were members of various far-right organizations, especially Somatemps. Members like Josep Ramon Bosch, Xavier Codorniu, José Domingo, Ferran Brunet and Joaquim Coll have attended or taken part in events related to far-right political entities like Somatemps, PxC, Vox, National Francisco Franco Foundation, National Democracy and Republican Social Movement. Furthermore, violent neo-nazi groups have been known to participate in some demonstrations organized by the SCC. The SCC denounces violence and claims it cannot strictly control who participates in their demonstrations. In January 2019, a court of law in Barcelona ordered several Catalan associations and prominent politicians to pay a 15,000 euro fine for a manifesto published in 2015 which accused SCC of having ties to Nazism and the extreme right. The court also ruled that the defendants should stop making similar defamatory accusations in the future.
In 2015, while Josep Ramon Bosch was president of the SCC, Catalan separatist parties ERC and CiU, together with the Catalan Green party ICV, sent a formal letter to Sylvie Gillaume, then vice-president of the European Parliament, protesting the granting of European Citizen's Price to Societat Civil Catalana. In the letter, they argued that the SCC has links with the Catalan far-right and promotes xenophobe and extremist ideas. SCC received the award in February 2015, triggering another protest letter. Gillaume dismissed this second letter, underlining that the award had already passed two courts: one Spanish and one communitarian in which deputies from PP, PSOE, and UPyD participated. European deputies from PSOE and PP were decisive in the rebuttal of the accusations. The Catalan Parliament accepted a proposal from ICV to lodge a complaint to the European Parliament. PP, PSC and Citizens voted against the proposal, while ICV-EUiA, ERC, CUP and CiU supported the measure.
Societat Civil Catalana has been criticised by Javier Barraycoa, former member of SCC and founder of Somatemps, of receiving funds from the central government of Spain in order to organize the demonstrations of the 8th and 12 October 2017. RENFE subsidized 50% of the cost of 245 train tickets for the Diada public act of SCC on September 11, 2014 in Tarragona. Josep Alsina from Somatemps reported that SCC receives generous donations through Joan Boscà Foundation to which many important Catalan businesses give money.
According to the Spanish online newspaper Publico, the balance sheet presented by SCC lacks transparency. With only 75 members and 4,000 collaborators SCC managed to gather one million euros in 2014. The members only account for 1.5% of money contributions. Another 1.5% comes from gathering posts and urns. The rest, 97%, comes from private donations. Audits have found no indication of wrongdoing. :ca:Félix Revuelta Fernández|Félix Revuelta, founder and principal stakeholder of :es:Naturhouse|Naturhouse, stated that he and many other businessmen give support to the SCC.