The delivery of the Princess of Girona awards, by the monarchical foundation of the same name, entails the presence in Catalonia of the king, the princess, and the infanta. And when Felipe VI arrived this Tuesday in front of the Liceu – because he is banned in Girona – the ANC's action to try to boycott the head of state's visit took place: a group of about a hundred activists, camouflaged by a mass of umbrellas in the style of the Roman Empire's tortoise formation, threw rubber balls at him, but they did not reach their target by many meters and the monarch did not even notice. A banner with the king upside down could be seen on the building opposite the Liceu.

Ten months before the next municipal elections, the pro-independence tripartite that governed Girona since 2023 has come to an end. After a harsh article published on Sunday, in which the deputy mayor and candidate for re-election for Junts, Gemma Geis, had already anticipated that her "patience" had run out, the party of Carles Puigdemont has made the decision to leave the executive and move to the opposition. Geis announced this Tuesday morning at a press conference, accompanied by the party's six councilors. "Our degree of demand is very high and Girona deserves more," she stated.

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.

The latest CEO study has put numbers to the conversations we've all heard at some point, which anticipate an extraordinary leap for Aliança Catalana in Parliament. When a party's main message is as basic as "Save Catalonia" and it's formulated by a leader who is not at all empathetic, at the head of an unknown team, and yet its electoral expectations soar, it means it has connected with the real or suggested discontents of many people, regarding street insecurity, Islamic radicalism, "massive" immigration, the emigration of well-prepared young Catalans, the decline of the language, or fiscal plundering. And, pay attention, because the diagnosis has found a new centrality where voters from the integrationist Catalanism of Junts and Convergència to the bull-and-Legion Spanish nationalists of Vox have come to coincide. One flag unites them: Islamophobia.

A few days ago, Floren Aoiz was in Palma, a Navarrese abertzale activist with a long trajectory, currently responsible for the area of political relations with the State of EH Bildu. Invited by the Darder Mascaró Foundations and the La Col·lectiva association, he granted an interview with Anna Mascaró, from Ara Balears, in which he said very interesting things. For example: “In Euskal Herria there is a greater tendency towards sovereignty among Basque speakers (...) but there are also many non-Basque speaking sovereigntists. In recent years, more: it is a growth linked to the perception that sovereignty offers an alternative for society as a whole. An alternative not only of the left, but also linked to society's ability to govern itself. To understand self-government in a certain direction, which is the defense of public services, the defense of better living and working conditions... A model of coexistence. In the case of Euskal Herria, the aspiration for sovereignty means that we want to obtain this sovereignty with respect to the Spanish and French states. But in the world we live in, it is also a demand for democratic sovereignty against capital, against international capital flows and decisions in which peoples have very little say”.It is so. Nine, ten years ago, when Catalan sovereignism was able to propose a true alternative, that is to say: a Republic based precisely on coexistence, equal opportunities (this implies the defense of public services and good living and working conditions), it had an absolute majority in Parliament, it confronted the Spanish state and obtained —briefly, but it obtained it— world attention. Many saw it as a threat to the established order, but this was precisely the greatness of the proposal and what made, in the eyes of many others, the Catalan Republic not seem like a threat, but rather a hope. The old order was what the Spanish state represented; the Catalan Republic represented —it promised— a step forward in rights and freedoms, a new 21st-century Republic, progressive, advanced, mature, capable of including citizens rooted in the past and those who have just arrived. A country founded on the Catalan language and culture, in dialogue with the languages and cultures of the world.Political defeat led to another self-inflicted defeat. A tortured abandonment in internal hemorrhages, psychodramas, obsessive searches for culprits, and idealizations of pasts supposedly better than they ever existed as invoked. Withdrawal, conservatism, and ultra-conservatism: the attitudes of the fearful and the opportunists who believe their moment has come to command something, even if it's just scraps. There are those who still insist on denying the existence of a Catalan far-right, even when it's right in front of them, and those who consider a poll sums to an "independentist majority" with the seats of Junts and ERC plus those of Aliança Catalana. This is indeed the direct path to definitive failure.

The Sindicat d'Estudiants dels Països Catalans (SEPC) repainted two weeks ago the pro-independence mural in the UAB's Plaça Cívica that the rectorate had erased by judicial order during Easter week and which had been welcoming students for thirteen years. Only two days later, the pro-Spanish elements eliminated it. This was done by the association Unión de Brigadas, which brings together seven small groups from all over Catalonia – four of which are active –, mainly from the metropolitan area of Barcelona, who are dedicated to removing pro-independence symbolism from public spaces.

Yves-François Blanchet is the leader of the Bloc Quebequès —the party that runs for the Canadian Parliament and is the sister party to the Partit Quebequès, which runs in Quebec— and a few weeks ago he received ARA taking advantage of his stay in Barcelona.

Shortly after the 2023-24 election cycle, which granted regional and municipal power to the PSC, I wrote in this newspaper that the Socialists would occupy the center of the Catalan political chessboard for a long time, and that their rivals should concentrate on replacing fragmentation with regrouping, at least from a tactical point of view. I even wondered if Catalan sovereignty had already reached its Alamo. That is, at the point where the only option is to close ranks and dig in against a stronger enemy. At that moment, it seemed to me that this desperate solution was premature, because it meant abandoning decades of inclusive Catalanism with a desire for hegemony.

Nobody likes to speak ill of their country. Me neither. Self-criticism is tedious. It's easier to relativize, to look the other way, to see the speck in someone else's eye and not the log in your own. It's uncomfortable to put your finger on your own wounds. When the wound is open, it hurts. In this article, I do just that: apply a good splash of alcohol to see if our political, social, economic, and cultural body reacts. I confess I don't have much hope. The warning signs are clear.

The lack of international support was one of the reasons the Process failed. Only one world leader defended the October 1st referendum: Nicolás Maduro. The Venezuelan president, ousted by the US, defended the referendum. "Catalonia had the right to express itself democratically," he said on October 1st in his program. Sundays with MaduroInterspersing images of police repression, which he described as "terrible," he had already been photographed with the Catalan independence flag (estelada) at the documentary's presentation in April.Maduro, unwavering loyalty, Directed by Lluís Bartra, a member of the Ítaca collective, a left-wing pro-independence group, the photograph infuriated the PDECat party. "If anyone thinks they're making a difference by having Maduro pose with the Catalan independence flag, they haven't understood anything," warned coordinator Marta Pascal. Eight years later, the figure of Maduro, who repressed the Venezuelan opposition while in power, continues to divide the pro-independence movement. In this sense, Trump's attack on Venezuela has highlighted the division within the pro-independence movement regarding international relations.

The historian Josep Maria Muñoz has just published An infinite sorrow (Arcadia), in which he reviews the last half-century of Catalan politics and Catalonia's failed attempts to reformulate the State with the recognition of its national identity.

A segment of Catalan nationalism desires, or aspires to, the independence of Catalonia. However, after October 2017, the real possibilities of achieving this goal in the short or medium term appear very slim, if not nonexistent, at least in the eyes of the vast majority. Only a dreamer or a delusional person would now repeat the phrase "it's just around the corner." As is well known, history favors the strong, not those who defend, or are convinced they are defending, a just cause. In the current context, in which Catalonia remains a part of Spain, and a very significant part at that, and more than eight years after that failed declaration of independence, it is appropriate, even necessary, to consider what stance should be taken regarding the relationship between the independence movement and the future of the Spanish state, or Spain.

The comparison between Catalan independence and nationalism with the film has long been used as a joke. Life of BrianFrom Monty Python. Specifically, everyone remembers the scene where the People's Front of Judea and the Judean People's Front clash, two fringe groups, difficult to distinguish at first glance, yet who hate each other with a ferocious intensity. "We hate the Romans, but above all we hate the People's Front of Judea." Monty Python aimed their satirical capacity in two directions. On the one hand, against the abuses of power of imperialism and closed systems of thought, such as religions. On the other, against the ineffectiveness and internal miseries (often linked to the egos of the leaders) of movements that aspire to be alternative and transformative. Terry Gilliam is right when he says that, today, a film like Life of Brian It would be met with great hostility: both sides would be caricatured, and immediately both sides would accuse the comics of working for the enemy.

This weekend, after listening to Roger Escapa's interview on Montse Venturós, former mayor of Berga, and read the book almost in one sitting The Republican Rift, by journalists Adrià Santasusagna and Bernat Vilaró, I have understood to what extent the human factor also has a decisive weight in the world of politics and, therefore, in the history of a country.

Ultraconservative nationalism is on the rise. We can quickly see it by mentioning a few names: Trump, Orbán, Milei... It is in this context that historian Eric Storm (Netherlands, 1966) published Nationalisms, a world history (Crítica), a book that doesn't focus on a single country or continent, but rather, as its name suggests, examines the history of nationalism worldwide in an exhaustive work that allows us to draw the similarities that exist between regions and understand why it is advancing worldwide.

Albert Batet, president of the Junts group in the Parliament, yesterday defined Salvador Illa as "the great anesthetizer of Catalonia." It was a way of bringing together in a single adjective the monotonous public personality of the president of the Generalitat (caricatured in the Poland (like someone capable of withering plants just by speaking) and denouncing what Junts calls the "denationalization" of Catalonia.

Eight years after the collapse of 2017, the Catalan independence movement doesn't have one elephant in the room, it has two: Oriol Junqueras and Carles Puigdemont. The continuity of the two main leaders of the Process completely conditions their respective political spaces and prevents the essential catharsis and profound renewal of the entire movement, without which it is impossible to climb out of the electoral, political, discursive, and cultural hole it is in.

The eighth anniversary of October 1st has passed amidst the normalizing silence of socialism, the chronic convalescence of the pro-independence parties that were the protagonists of 2017, nostalgia for what we were, the malaise of a lost opportunity, and the reality of a world at war that now relativizes all those years filled with effort.

Spanish politics has been strongly influenced by violence for years. On October 1st, the police brutally beat citizens in the street as they went to vote in a referendum. A couple of years ago, there were grotesque mobs of far-right supporters on Calle Ferraz, in front of the PSOE headquarters, where physical violence was frequent, although the Popular Party applauded them as exemplary forms of citizen violence. Just over a year ago, Aznar famously said, "Whoever can do, let them do."

The elections of May 12, 2024, marked a turning point in Catalan politics. For the first time since 2012, the self-proclaimed pro-independence parties do not have an absolute majority in the Catalan Parliament. However, this week's Diada, a year after Salvador Illa's investiture—last year's election was immediately after his election—certifies a definitive shift in Catalan politics.