What is Citizen Movement

For the purposes of this chapter, it is interesting to analyse the arguments that justify the secessionist cause in Catalonia and, in particular, whether this bottom-up social demand falls within the scope of the democratically admissible. Similarly, it is important to determine how the Catalan people's ‘taking to the streets' represents a concrete political response with which in some form the will of the Catalan people has conditioned and even precipitated the political agenda of the current government. What has happened in Catalonia highlights the new—and prevailing—role played by civil society in public affairs. Within this framework, new questions arise regarding the counterpower exercised by citizens through massive, peaceful, and recurrent social mobilizations, which can, as a whole, be considered a spontaneous manifestation of participatory democracy.