For at least fifteen years, after the summer break, whether for pleasure or on demand, I've been writing an article about the Diada. It's become a habit, and it's as if for one day the hunting season has opened for an invisible elephant, the famous elephant in the room that the Diada makes more present. It's its celebration. Since I have a day of the week assigned to me, depending on the calendar, the article is published before or after the Diada. This year, it will be printed on the eleventh.
I could make a catalogue, a shared emotional arc, reviewing the Diades. The joyful and hopeful ones before the 17th; the emotional Diada that preceded October 1st, with the minute of silence for the attack on the Rambla and the singing ofThe Reapers filling the streets of Barcelona; and then the whole staircase that goes from resistance to disillusionment and shame, like a falling thermometer: the deflation of the 18th after not swearing in Puigdemont, with cries of "Freedom for political prisoners!"; the pandemic of the 20th; the creeping disappointment and shame, the first doubts about whether to go or not in the year 21. On the 22nd, the president said he wouldn't be there; on the 23rd, it was a serious and meditative Diada; and last year the doubt returned: are you going? To do what?
This year, unless there's a last-minute miracle, I won't go, and I'm sorry. I'm always busy. No friend, no one I know, has even asked me what I'd do. Going with friends or family was always a good idea, but this year we didn't even talk about it. There's a long weekend, so many people will take advantage of the holiday to spread the fog, and they'll be right to do so.
I'm writing this the day before. I'm checking what's been organized, beyond the ANC T-shirts, and I see that it's once again a decentralized demonstration, which is like saying it's dispersed. I'd think it was right; I'm half an hour from Girona. But no. So many masks have fallen, since the 17th, and what was underneath is so ugly... As in the West, there's no other project in sight than to continue plundering what we had. They're dangling the flowery carrot of a new financing system, but no one believes anything anymore. It only remains to be seen what has been done to the pillars of education and language. And here we are. The far right is frightening, but corruption, accepted without fuss, has ended up doing so too, like two sides of the same cynicism. I'm not surprised that no one around me even considers going to the Diada, and I think I know why: they're afraid of being institutionalized, that is, they're afraid of being used or plundered.
So many people won't go to the demonstration, not because of laziness or lack of awareness, but quite the opposite.
