Have you already renewed your Filmin subscription?

I have seen Icarus: The Week in FlamesThe Spanish-language documentary about the October 2019 protests in Barcelona has provoked outrage (a storm in a teacup on Twitter) from some fervent patriots who have called for a boycott of the Filmin platform, which is offering it until the 31st of this month. The documentary in question is so inept and laughable, so crude and clumsy, that it's hard to believe anyone could be offended by such garbage. Within Filmin's extensive and splendid catalog (a godsend for any film lover, which I have no intention of giving up for anything, least of all for any patriotic appeal), Icarus: The Week in Flames It would undoubtedly fit right into the section dedicated to the most outlandish and improbable B-movies, alongside Troma's hilarious productions and ketchup-laced horror films. The Trial of the Trial, with Magistrate Marchena presiding over a blatantly biased court, sparked the Urquinaona riot and also marked the point at which certain state corruptions overflowed, corruptions that still clog everything today. But that's one thing, and a documentary that seems written and directed by the characters from... Martínez, the fascistI don't know what this will look like among Filmin's releases this week, but given the platform's history, I refuse to give it any more importance. In any case, read on. Mònica Planas's criticism of the pieceAnd you will find —as always— a solvent analysis.

The attack on Filmin's Barcelona headquarters by cardboard cutout separatists (even their name, Nosaltres Sols, sounds like a joke) is an act of barbarism, nothing more, but above all, it's pure and simple imbecility. The same can be said of the heated comments on social media from the guardians and custodians of the Catalan homeland. These kinds of furious reactions (especially against a platform like Filmin, more committed to Catalan than any other) are an expression of impotence and shortsightedness proportional to the stupidity provoked by the apologetic, thuggish, sycophantic, and/or pedantic tone—sometimes all at once—of those who specialize in pointing out traitors and conspirators.

Episodes like this reveal why the independence movement has lost ground in recent years, and why it will lose again every time it tries to do something significant: because it not only produces patriots and charlatans (these types are everywhere), but it also listens to them and gives them credence. This results in a stagnant, stale, outdated, and tense independence movement that reeks of flatulence, stuck in an endless loop of whining and insults, now living to paint graffiti on Filmin's headquarters and sweating to plaster an ice cream parlor with posters where an Argentinian waiter refuses to speak Catalan, and ultimately going nowhere because what it says is so self-referential, so immature, so sterile, that no one else cares or understands it. Meanwhile, Vox and the PP are creeping into the center ground, rushing to claim as their own the defense of the freedoms they hate and attack.