The 2003 demonstrations against the Iraq War were massive and numerous all over the world. The one in Barcelona was so resounding that a couple of generations will never forget the "No to war!" that thundered in the streets and filled the balconies with banners. So much so that former President Bush Sr. said that the Barcelona protesters would not decide US foreign policy.
Now, however, with the Israeli bombing of Gaza, which has caused more than 50,000 Palestinian deaths, we have not experienced anything similar. They are not identical situations (the murders and kidnappings perpetrated by Hamas explain the initial Israeli response), but the result is the death and displacement of civilians, and the reduction to rubble of the entire Gaza Strip, on an unprecedented scale, and not for lack of precedents in the region.
Perhaps it's because the 2003 protest was against Bush but also against Aznar, who went to perform a geopolitical milhombres in the Azores, and that, therefore, popular mobilization was of interest to the Catalan and Spanish left, who now lack that incentive to take to the streets. Or perhaps it's because we're coming off an inflation of independence demonstrations of limited utility. Or perhaps it's that 22 years later, a good part of post-pandemic society has already seen them in all their glory (including the war in Ukraine) and thinks it has enough to do with its housing problems, hidden poverty, and the future of its children to worry about other people's problems, however painful they may be. If there has been any social and market engineering behind the demobilization, it has succeeded.
