Fifty international personalities ask that Catalans are granted the right to vote

Already Six Nobel Prize winners lead the supporters list and are now joined by celebrities such as Yoko Ono Lennon, Peter Gabriel and Silvio Rodríguez, along with football players Éric Cantona and Hristo Stóitxkov

Support for the ‘Let Catalans Vote’ manifesto continues to grow, with 50 international figures now publicly lending their support to the manifesto. Since it was launched in 2014, six Nobel laureates have given their support to the manifesto. The most recent addition is American human rights activist Jody Williams, 1997 Nobel Peace Prize winner for her work with the International Campaign to Ban Landmines.

Since June, a host of new celebrities have come out in favour of the international manifesto, among them the singer and peace activist Yoko Ono Lennon, the English singer-songwriter Peter Gabriel and the Cuban singer Silvio Rodríguez. Two noteworthy additions from the world of sport include the ex-football players and now actor Éric Cantona and the Bulgarian Hristo Stóitxkov.

Other new personalities who have joined the global call to give Catalans the right to vote, include the sociologist, politician and founder of the Slovenian constitution Peter Jambreck; Heiner Flassbeck, former Secretary of State of the German Ministry of Finance and Chair of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development between 2003 and 2012, and Costas Lapavitsas, former MP for Greece’s Syriza party and professor of Economics at the University of London.

Published on the website http://www.letcatalansvote.org, the manifesto states that “the best way to resolve internal disputes is to deploy the tools of democracy”, and it calls for “the Spanish Government and its institutions” to work together with their Catalan counterparts to allow Catalan citizens to vote on their political future, and to then establish good faith negotiations based on the outcome of the vote. The manifesto notes that ‘preventing Catalans from voting seems to contradict the principles that inspire democratic societies’, a statement which seems particularly relevant to this most recent political attempt to preclude a referendum on self-determination in Catalonia.

Complete list and manifesto: www.letcatalansvote.org/en