Twenty-five years have passed since that fateful date; the scenarios are different, but the perplexity persists and grows. On September 11, 2001, we abruptly discovered two things: that there is no rearguard when fanaticism prevails and that the end of history was merely a mirage built by an enthusiastic idealism. From the images of the destroyed Twin Towers, we have moved to the images of migrants entering Ceuta, driven by planned rumors and great despair. A quarter of a century has passed between the two news events, and we have exchanged the decapitated ingenuities of the end of the Cold War for the saturated incredulities of the new hybrid wars. This August, with our eyes set on the Spanish city in North Africa, we have also discovered two things: borders can be very precarious and a peculiar explosive mix of cynicism, irresponsibility, and fanaticism has colonized politics, especially in the international sphere. When we saw the first plane crash into Manhattan, we thought, during the initial minutes, that all of it was not entirely real but rather a movie; when we saw the flood of people entering Ceuta, we did not doubt the certainty of the event, even though fake and real images are mixed on social media. The world became more insecure in 2001; now it has become more chaotic, indecipherable, and explosive. Beyond the facts, there are the inertias that now dominate the public sphere of developed societies: fear, distrust, unhealthy nostalgia, and disinterest in the truth. And, above all, the rejection of politics, which a part of the citizenry considers “a problem.” In this theater, the predatory leaderships of figures like Trump, Putin, and Netanyahu obtain the admiration and adherence of those who demand “immediate changes” and “effective solutions.” These are leaderships that offer a plausible refuge at a price that many citizens are willing to pay: militarized security in exchange for sidelining rights, freedoms, empathy, and compassion. Behold the banner—hardly original—of those who want to bury the world that emerged in 1945.

Any policy driven by nostalgia is doomed to failure. We observe the temptation of nostalgia throughout Europe, including in Catalonia. It is a form of escape from reality and is not an attitude exclusive to far-right formations. The paradox is that this drift reaches us when the present demands greater capacity to rethink changes, to prevent the future from becoming only threat and fear. And it is time to rethink because it is time to rebuild. The hour of a reconstruction policy arrives. Without solemnity, but with commitment, with a vocation to conjure the mixture of irrationalism and fatalism that fertilizes the ground for anti-politics and, in turn, for populist and reactionary options.We are experiencing collective discouragement and democratic malaise that call for a combination of self-criticism, listening, and reform. Self-criticism of some premises that have underpinned basic policies to date, listening to citizens who express various forms of disaffection towards institutions, and decisive reform in those areas where problems demand a change of focus, not just the allocation of more resources. From here, we will have to assume the risk of reconstruction, especially on two overlapping fronts.First of all, a national reconstruction, indispensable after the stage of the sovereignist process, which ended badly as long as it is not possible to ask again —without baton blows— what citizenship wants. But today's Catalonia is not that of the post-civil war, nor that of the eighties, nor even that of the 92 Games or the events of 2017. Three issues that are part of the daily agenda clearly show this: housing, economic model, and language. The world of Jordi Pujol and Pasqual Maragall —to name the two most important Catalan leaders of the second half of the 20th century— no longer exists, nor will it return. It remains basic to assume the framework of "Catalonia, one people", but this cannot be used to stop analyzing the great social transformations that challenge us.