Free (Catalan: Lliures) was a Catalan political party founded in October 2016 and registered in December[1][2] by former members of Democratic Convergence of Catalonia (CDC) and Democratic Union of Catalonia (UDC), including former CDC regional minister in Jordi Pujol's sixth government Antoni Fernández Teixidó as well as former UDC deputy Roger Montañola.

[7] The party had collected the required signatures for contesting the 2017 Catalan regional election, but it ultimately declined to do so on the grounds because of the existing "strong political polarization"—resulting from the enforcement of direct rule over Catalonia following the events sparked by the 1 October independence referendum—being "inauspicious for the Catalanist centre".

[13] The party also attended the "Poblet Meeting" on 21 September 2019, together with about 200 members from the PDeCAT's more moderate sectors, seeking to discuss the political future of the post-convergent political space and its drift towards unilateralism under former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont's National Call for the Republic (CNxR) and his growing influence over CDC's successor, the Catalan European Democratic Party (PDeCAT).

[14] Among those attending the Meeting were former PDeCAT coordinator-general Marta Pascal, party colleagues Carles Campuzano, Jordi Xuclà, Marta Pigem or Lluis Recoder, as well as members from other parties aside of Lliures (such as Ramon Espadaler and Albert Batlle from United to Advance (Els Units)).

[17][18][19] The congress was delayed and then suspended as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain, and new developments up until June 2020 saw Lliures disengaging from the initial merger idea in favour of constituting a broader electoral alliance that could also comprise other parties, such as Els Units or the newly founded Nationalist Party of Catalonia (PNC).