Barça's decision to suspend the tribute to the world champions has caused an earthquake on social media and a certain degree of discomfort in some Catalan press. Only this explains, for example, that this topic does not appear on the cover of the "Sport and be frankly hidden in the of World Sport. In programs like The Jugones beach bar, as was to be expected, they jumped on it and accused Joan Laporta of mixing politics and sport, of dividing Barcelonismo, and of positioning himself in favor of the independentists. And well, there are several reflections to be made here.

Until this Tuesday, and because the press asked him about it, the Government had not commented on the police aggression against a Catalan minor who was carrying an estelada last Sunday evening, prior to the match between Elche and Barça. "From the Government we condemn the use of this violence, in light of the images we have all seen, of the aggression against this young man," stated the executive's spokesperson, Sílvia Paneque, at the press conference following the executive council meeting. Thus, Salvador Illa's government has regretted this police action and has emphasized the need for it to be investigated. In parallel, the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, defended this Tuesday that the internal ex officio investigation into the National Police is what "is appropriate" and that the corps "is the first interested party in analyzing and excluding any action that implies a minimum deviation from proportionality" in the use of force.

The former Minister of Culture and Junts deputy in Parliament Lluís Puig (Terrassa, 1959) speaks to ARA, coinciding with the celebration of the Catalan Summer University in Prada. He lives in exile in Northern Catalonia.

The president of the governing board of the Catalan Summer University (UCE), Jordi Casassas (Barcelona, 1948), speaks to ARA to review this year's edition.

The enemies of Catalonia and the cause of its freedom, as well as the reasons for the Principality's various defeats throughout history, such as in the War of Succession, have been detailed this Friday by the president of ERC, Oriol Junqueras, at the Catalan Summer University in Prada de Conflent. The republican leader reviewed the reasons for the defeats against Castile and related them to the struggle in recent years with the 'Procés'. Who today opposes the independence aspirations of some Catalans? Is the PSC part of this bloc? Junqueras dodged the questions posed to him in Prada, eventually resorting to a name: "For example, Albert Rivera." Seven years after his resignation and the dismantling of Ciutadans, Junqueras still remembers the orange party and its most representative leader as a symbol of anti-Catalonia, of the internal enemy that hinders progress and makes national liberation difficult.

Cristòfol Soler was a very young deputy with the PP, at only 26 years old, in 1982; he later became the Balearic Minister of Economy, President of the Parliament and, finally, President of the Balearic Government, but he only held the position for ten months, between 1995 and 1996, the shortest in history. He replaced Gabriel Cañellas and lasted very little, but the most surprising thing was when, in the midst of the Process, he declared himself an independentist and presided over the Sovereign Assembly of Mallorca, of which he is still a member. From Prada de Conflent, where Soler attended a round table at the Catalan Summer University, he speaks to ARA and warns that "there are no regionalists left in the PP". In his opinion, what is being done by the executive of the popular Marga Prohens would not be regionalism at any time, despite the autochthonous legacy that from the Balearic PP they say they defend.

Without a shadow of a doubt: Junts should not make a pact with Aliança Catalana, according to its general secretary. Jordi Turull, in fact, goes further and proposes a total "battle" against the "discourse of hate" of the formation led by Sílvia Orriols. He presented this on Wednesday from Prada de Conflent as a recipe for combating the far-right, which also includes a "battle of values" and "ethical" against a party with which he said he wants nothing to do. Despite the words of some former convergent leader like David Madí, who calls for reaching agreements with the radical right – an idea not dismissed by some in the local sphere – Turull was emphatic and warned of the "harmful effects" of the growth of the Catalan and Spanish far-right. "The nation sees itself threatened, but [the threat] always came from outside, for the first time it comes from within with hatred towards the different," he stated.

After the Catalan independence process and the division of recent years, the recovery and how to move forward in the future have been the most repeated themes. This Tuesday, at the Catalan University of Summer in Prada, a tribute was paid to the former president of Òmnium, Muriel Casals, ten years after her death. The current president of the entity, Xavier Antich, the president of the Parliament, Josep Rull, and the former president of the Parliament and of the ANC, Carme Forcadell, have performed a kind of "beatification" of Casals' figure and have prescribed her as a remedy to "raise the independence movement," regain unity, and combat "the hatred" of the far-right party Aliança Catalana, led by Sílvia Orriols.

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.