When an ideology, a group, or a person experiences what they perceive as a failure, they can—and often do—have a negative reaction. There would be much to discuss about the failure of the Process, because, despite not achieving the desired objective—Catalan independence—it demonstrated several strengths of Catalan society and politics: an unusual capacity for mobilization and organization, a strong awareness of the common good, and the ability to unite very different political cultures under a single idea. At the same time, it highlighted Spain's lack of democratic consistency, which, when faced with a democratic question, only knew how to provide a repressive response.
The continued repression and internal conflicts have ultimately given strength, within the independence movement, to hate speech that is also self-hating. Everywhere we hear or read appeals to be strong, or unfriendly, or to not go with who knows what lily in our hands. Many are swept away by nostalgia for bygone eras that they remember or imagine were better or more propitious (they weren't). Some need to embrace very high or very large flags. Others are overcome by the bad omens that announce the death of the language, the arts, the economy, talent, and the entire country. Still others subscribe to conspiracy theories that imagine complicated plots to destroy Catalonia (with the collaboration, of course, of the sellouts, traitors, and lukewarm people they detect everywhere). There are those who seize it to yearn for the warlike and violent ardor that apparently once inflamed the now-watered blood of the Catalans. Victimhood, complaining, whining, and defeatism are guaranteed success on social media and in the media. Speeches about invasions and colonizations multiply, and the most unscrupulous seek to be heard by proposing mass deportations and de-Castilianization; there are also those who drop eugenic insinuations. Immigrants (those of today and those of the 1960s) are insulted, pointing them out as cannon fodder for obscure processes of substitution. Furthermore, the internal division within the independence movement is profound and is often expressed in insults, lies, fabricated accusations, infantilism, and fantasies. This intellectual dregs, let's say, supports the growth of an extreme right-wing independence movement, a spontaneity-filled and full of expectations.
The faint-hearted, when they puff out their chests, always get a little laugh. However, all of the things we've listed in the previous paragraph are forms of self-destruction for the Catalan independence movement, especially in the context of a Spanish state and an EU under extreme political tension, in which the far right (which represents and exalts the persecution of diversity and minorities) has much to gain. Some of us have never believed in homelands; we have, however, believed in the common good. Also in the Catalan language, and in the culture it is developing. We will continue to believe, even if the false patriots (often a tautology) get angry. Happy Diada to everyone.
