far-right blog Dolça Catalunya contributed to boost its popularity. Other parties and movements, mostly pro-secession, have criticized the concept of Tabarnia, like Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, PDeCAT and the far-right and xenophobic Moviment Identitari Català and Front Nacional de Catalunya. Movement Proponents of Tabarnia wish to distance themselves from the Catalan separatist movement and reclaim the right of a number of territories near the area of Barcelona and Tarragona to constitute themselves as an autonomous community within Spain. In the 2015 and 2017 Catalan regional elections, parties opposed to secession (mainly Citizens, PSC and PP) received a majority of votes and seats in Tabarnia as a whole and in a small number of coastal comarques (Tarragonès, Baix Penedès and Baix Llobregat) including the city of Tarragona. They received a plurality of votes in the comarca of Barcelonès, yet not in the city of Barcelona itself. They allude to a series of fiscal arguments similar to those of Catalan separatism in regards to Spain. The term "Tabarnia" is a neologism based on the names of Tarragona and Barcelona, the two Catalan provinces where support for separatism is lower, although in last Catalan election, Tarragona province showed more support for separatism than unionism. The movement uses as a legal basis the Canadian Clarity Act, according to which regions opposed to Quebecois separatism are to remain within Canada in case of a secession, as well as Articles 143 and 144 of the Spanish constitution, which allows the formation of autonomous communities. An ongoing online petition is taking place at Change.org in order to be sent to the Spanish Congress of Deputies to consider the creation of this new autonomous region. It has received 281 000 signatures to date. On 4 March 2018 a protest mocking the Catalan independence bid was organized by the Tabarnia movement. 15 000 demonstrators according to the urban guard and 200 000 according to the organizers gathered with Spanish, Tabarnian and Catalan flags and waived slogans for Tabarnia mimicking those of the Catalan independence movement. The protest started with a floral offering at the statue of Rafael Casanova, Considered by the independentists a patriot of their cause, but that according to one of his descendants present at the protest was actually a Spanish patriot. According to one of the organizers, the goal of the protest was to show the absurdity of the arguments for independence. He told the media