What did you do on February 15, 2003?

Everyone over 35 remembers the "No to War" movement of 2003 and 2004. For many children of that time, now fully grown adults, it marked their entry into peace education and provided them with yet another reason to be allergic to the Spanish right and to feel complicit with the Spanish left—both elements so central to the political process, first, and now to the far-right populisms that have redrew the map of mental boundaries.

That was huge, much more than a mass demonstration, which, modesty aside, was and is a specialty we excel at in Catalonia. That was a genuine, cross-cutting popular movement and a way of being in the world. So Sánchez sought to tap into the sentimental capital accumulated in the hearts of millions when he summarized his opposition to the American-Israeli attacks on Iran with "No to War." But we are not the same as February 15, 2003, neither in Catalonia nor anywhere else in the world. For the crowds who demonstrated in Barcelona that Saturday afternoon, "No to war" was also a way of saying "No to Aznar." Up to 90% of Spaniards were against the Iraq War, and that near unanimity meant that even a majority of PP voters were against it.

When Sánchez now says "No to war," he is also reminding the world that more than 30 million demonstrators took to the streets on the same day in various capital cities to reject the war plans in Iraq based on President Bush's lies. They had the support of many governments, especially in Europe, where Aznar and Blair stood alone. That is no longer the case. But Sánchez has what he wanted: a head-on confrontation with the bullying US president.