It is no coincidence that the same party –Aliança Catalana– that congratulates the German AfD with the "Ja hem passat!" (We have passed!) that the Francoists chanted in 1939 when they entered Madrid has committed the "mistake" of voting in favor of the Vox deputy who insulted the memory of President Lluís Companys by labeling him a murderer. Because if you are Catalan and a democrat, you cannot be mistaken about Companys in any way.

Surprise at the Parliament's Board of Spokespersons. Aliança Catalana supported Vox this Tuesday in an attempt to prevent the spokesperson for the Spanish nationalist party, Joan Garriga, from being admonished for his insults against Lluís Companys, calling him a murderer. Despite the combined votes of these two parties and the PP, the proposal from Garriga's party did not go through and the sanction remains. Nevertheless, during the press conference before the media, Garriga thanked these two parties for their support for his request that the Bureau reconsider the sanction for violating the code of conduct.

The Cecor is a coordination center full of screens from where the heads of a Mossos d'Esquadra operation follow its progress. And what was set up for the eve of the Diada was not easy. At the Fossar de les Moreres there was an event called by Aliança Catalana and at that same time the pro-independence left called for counter-protests in the area to try to prevent the pro-independence far-right from reaching the meeting. Several Mossos public order cordons closed the access to the Fossar and at several moments the anti-fascist protesters tried to overcome them. It would be too bold, police sources state, to say that they were really about to overcome this cordon, but there were moments of tension and the police line had to take a step back. The question that various sources are asking is what would have happened if the two protests had managed to meet. The most repeated answer is that there would have been clashes between protesters.

The courts have ruled in favor of Sílvia Orriols. The Girona courts have upheld the appeal by the leader of Aliança Catalana against the 10,001-euro fine imposed by the Generalitat for linking Islam to "gang rapes, genital mutilation, and forced marriages," and have annulled the financial sanction. "We celebrate this enormously. [...] Sílvia has won," stated Jordi Coma, a member of the party's legal secretariat, in statements collected by the ACN during the party's II Municipalist Convention of the far-right party in Ripoll.

This Friday, hundreds of anti-fascists demonstrated against the Vox event in Barcelona, where their leader, Santiago Abascal, had not appeared for two years. This has been the third mobilization by the far-left in just seven days. On Thursday the 10th, they took to the streets en masse to boycott the Aliança Catalana event at the Fossar de les Moreres, and the following day they did so again against the ultra-right group Núcleo Nacional, which held a rally with fascist salutes and slogans. In all three counter-demonstrations, incidents occurred and the Mossos d'Esquadra charged to prevent clashes with those organizing the events. But what are both sides seeking with their calls to action?

“I believe in Vilanova i la Geltrú. I believe in its people. And I believe that the best of Vilanova i la Geltrú is yet to be written,” stated Xavier Cusiné during his presentation as the mayoral candidate for Aliança Catalana on June 20th. He will not write it with Sílvia Orriols' party. As ARA has learned, Cusiné has decided to step down from the candidacy, citing "personal reasons," although disagreements with the party's organization secretary, Oriol Gès, could be behind his departure. "They couldn't even stand each other, and this isn't something new," sources from the party state.

In a recent interview with El País the German philosopher Peter Sloterdijk spoke about the latest elections in Saxony-Anhalt and noted that the emergence of Alternative for Germany is causing the normalization of far-right ideas. One of the most interesting points in the interview is that Sloterdijk points out a factor that could be affecting Western democracies more than we might think: that of polls, which in recent times have increased exponentially and occupy a considerable space in the political sections of the media. Every week we are given polls, says the philosopher of his country, something that also happens here. He states that they are like a training ground to stop feeling ashamed of voting for this type of party and that they create a perverse effect, as if the ghost of the virtual result, he says, ended up becoming reality. In this sense, polls would be a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.

Anti-processist, pro-Israeli and Islamophobic. With this calling card, it was not difficult to foresee that Joan Carretero would support Aliança Catalana, as has ended up happening. He is the first former minister of the Generalitat to publicly position himself in favor of Sílvia Orriols' party. He announced it in a tweet just after the Diada following the insults that the party leader received during the anti-fascist protests at the Fossar and the September 11th demonstration, and also due to an incident she suffered in Puigcerdà. "These days AC has gained, at least, 1 vote: the shouts of “Jew” at Sílvia Orriols and the tugging this morning by a Moorish son of a bitch (redundancy) who wanted to steal the chain I wear around my neck with the Magen David have made up my mind," he wrote in reference to the Star of David, the six-pointed symbol associated with the Jewish people and Judaism, which he wore around his neck. "Maybe they won't change anything, however, this pisses off everyone who has filled Catalonia with thieves, rapists and murderers. I continue with the thought that one cannot participate in the Spanish institutions in Catalonia. We will annoy the processists," he added in the tweet.

President Illa has decided to break the monotony, conscious, perhaps, that it was trapping him. His restrained tone was rewarded during the bewilderment of the 'Procés' aftermath and, by making a virtue of calm, he grasped the country's need to lower the tone and take a pause. With this criterion, and with his rejection of shrillness, Illa has been making progress, at a time when the exercise of conjuncturally assuming the framework of the possible seemed to be imposing itself.

On the way back from the Diada celebration in Barcelona, I heard that the protesters were making the same demographic summary: there were people over 50 and under 25. And the presence of young people is interpreted as a green shoot that dispels the idea that the end of the 2017 process created a cut that had no tail behind it.It helps that the failure of the 2017 process objective, plus the subsequent state repression and the division of the parties, apart from leaving the Government in the hands of the PSC, has shifted the center of political debate in Catalonia, so that problems such as the lack of housing, insecurity on the streets, the poor service of the suburban trains (Rodalies), strikes in Education, Healthcare or the farmers' protests, the use of the language... all this has ended up filling the voting intention polls for Aliança Catalana, which mimics the messages of the entire European far-right: there are groups impossible to incorporate into Catalan identity, who furthermore commit crimes and take the aid, with the approval of traditional parties, some corrupt and all clinging to their seats. And so, the lifelong debate, the Catalonia-Spain one, is replaced by the local version of a darker and more authoritarian global agenda. Yes, we have a debate about the regional financing system or the application of the amnesty, but the protest vote, of radical change, is shifting, polls say, towards Aliança Catalana, hand in hand with the identity vote in a radical sense (particularly Islamophobic, as we heard in the party's speeches at the Diada) and the punishment vote against the institutions.Where do these votes come from? Many of them come from the sovereignty movement, especially from Junts, and now Vox intends to attract the most Spanish-leaning disenchanted vote from the PSC, also taking advantage of the fact that it has now reached the middle of the legislative term with serious management problems in all the departments most important in terms of budget and impact on the lives of the majority. At the end of the week, Santiago Abascal will come to Catalonia to open the political season, taking advantage of the fact that Aliança Catalana has placed at the center the debate on the favorite topic they share, which is immigration. For Vox, the enemies are immigration and Sánchez, who does not defend Spain's borders. And for Aliança Catalana, the enemies are immigration and the rest of the parties, which do not defend security, public services; that is to say, Catalan identity and Western identity.

There are two ways to analyze this year's Diada. The pessimistic one reminds us that the country faces internal problems, and the latent threat of an involution in Spain, which –historically– indicates that we will be the ones to suffer. But in this context, the Eleventh of September has brought some 50,000 people to the streets, with more young people than ever; it is a respectable figure in our listless present. But it has also reminded us that among “our own” there are people who exude hatred. A new poll predicts the meteoric rise of Aliança Catalana. Overall, Parliament would once again have an absolute pro-independence majority, which will not be operational because there is a political and moral abyss between those who could be involved. If it serves as any consolation, the “Spanish” bloc is equally useless (unless the PSC wants to commit suicide by making a pact with the PP and Vox). Who will fish in these troubled waters? Many of us warned that the baton blows against the ballot boxes on October 1st could create a generation of skeptics. But we were not thinking of Orriols when, after the imprisonment of the pro-independence leaders, we shouted “The smiles are over!” Andreu Nin also, in April 1931, wrote: “Ourrevolutionwill not be so cheerful”. Because independence, like any revolution, is a serious affair. But Orriols has nothing serious about her, beyond her ridiculous solemnity. Her discourse, besides being an ethical failure of Catalanism, is a distraction and a deception.

The 2026 Diada leaves two elements on the table. The first is that, contrary to forecasts, there has been an upturn in participation in the independence movement's mobilizations, which is good news for a movement that has been living in a state of collective depression for years. The second is that all the actors of Catalanism, with a special mention for Òmnium and its current president, Xavier Antich, focused their messages in the same direction: the necessary fight against the far-right represented by Aliança Catalana.

The fact that thousands of young people—because it was, fundamentally, young people, more so than parents—protested on Thursday at the Fossar de les Moreres against racism in any of its forms is, if nothing else, good news. That they did so, specifically, against the closest xenophobic formula, that is to say, against Aliança Catalana, is much more relevant. In these troubled times, when it is so easy to see the eye of the hurricane ten thousand kilometers away and not want to see it nearby, right at home or knocking on the door. In any case, yes, there were thousands of young people, and some of the most active and supportive in the country, answering the call of the pro-independence left and with the support of the Tenants' Union (Sindicat de Llogateres), Top Manta, the Educational Assembly of Catalonia, the OJS, or the Enough Complicity with Israel coalition. Paradoxically, they are the only ones arrested this Diada. It must be remembered that they were protesting against 400 people who were gathered there under an institutional protection that was shameful, through an unusual deployment of various operational areas of the Mossos d'Esquadra and alongside some remnants of the most violent faction of the Boixos Nois. Insufferable paradoxes. In the middle, photojournalist Jordi Borràs, attacked by both. Because it happens that those 400 people, compared to the 8,000 who were protesting so justly against their presence, crudely represent the Catalan niche that euphorically congratulates itself on the victory of the AfD in Saxony-Anhalt, celebrates the genocide in Gaza with open arms, and miserably stirs up a humiliating ethnic-racial segregation. The Mossos, paradoxically, looked outward, but the German police have long been looking inward and classifying the AfD as a real threat of far-right extremism.Less paradoxical, more paroxysmal are some events I experienced during the afternoon of the Diada. Simultaneously, while the neo-Nazi group Núcleo Nacional was gathering at Plaça Verdaguer –poor Mossèn Cinto– under a drastic encirclement by the Mossos and with 1,500 anti-fascists protesting nearby, a small block of Aliança Catalana tried to march in the middle of the pro-independence demonstration almost as if nothing were happening –amidst growing reproaches and constant rejections, final police encirclement included, when the majority understands and understands very well everything that is at stake. Because what one must never do –in the light of the darkness of history– is to normalize racism, walk by its side, or give it space. The organizers have some responsibility, despite the prior warnings and alerts, just as we all do. I say this feeling both angry and disillusioned, worried and committed, scared and hopeful, as a cry or a plea or as an enough. Discreet or loud, the form is all the same to me, but the ethical, political, and cultural foundation is clear, explicit, and simple for future gatherings: no form of racism should be invited, allowed, whitewashed, or tolerated in a democratic, unitary demonstration. Do sanitary cordons work? They work, of course they do. Basically, if they are implemented. Let them manifest their racist hatred wherever they can, but let them not contaminate or parasitize a mobilization that demands a country for everyone by insulting diversity, cowardly criminalizing newcomers, and fueling the dirty and brutal reality that is all racism, when those responsible for the structural problems the country suffers sit in other seats of power and never arrive in boats adrift. I say this while returning home, pondering at every step and remembering an old anti-racist slogan from the nineties, when Lucrècia Pérez was murdered in 1992: don't mess with my friend, we used to say back then. And today it is of a literal militant anti-racism: don't mess for even a second –today, now, here– with my neighbors; don't bother the Senegalese family that lives on my same landing, door to door, anymore; nor the beloved Colombian neighbor from the fifth floor, who are already an inseparable part of my community, landscape, and country. The shoes of others, Casaldàliga would say, are mine. Paradoxically, polysemically, we are here because they are here —and vice versa.

It is customary for Aliança Catalana to skip the traditional floral offering at the monument in honor of Rafael Casanova, the last chief councilor of Barcelona who fought in 1714, because the pro-independence far-right prefers to pay homage to General Josep Moragues, a hero of the War of the Spanish Succession whom Philip V decapitated to display his head for twelve years at the Portal del Mar, as a warning to the Catalans. But the absence of Sílvia Orriols in the center of Barcelona has not prevented her party from being the protagonist in the interventions of political groups, organizations, and unions.

The election results in Saxony-Anhalt have fallen like a bucket of cold water on Germany and Europe as a whole. The continental wave of the far-right, which at one point seemed to be slowing down, has suddenly returned to the heart of Nazi amnesia. And it has received the applause of Trump-Musk-Putin. The AfD is pro-Kremlin and wants support for Ukraine to stop. The worst ghosts of anti-democratic xenophobia hover over the Old Continent.

Aliança Catalana was able to hold the floral offering at the Fossar de les Moreres normally last year. About thirty militants from Arran tried to access the historic site to boycott the event, but the Mossos d'Esquadra prevented them from doing so. This Diada, however, things have not been so calm.

The brand new mayoral candidate for Aliança Catalana in Vic, Elisenda Carrera, was until May the Councilor for International Cooperation as a representative of Ara Vic (PDeCat) in a municipal coalition government led by Junts. The rumors of her link to the far-right Aliança, which ARA already published that they had contacted, precipitated her resignation from the local executive to become a non-attached councilor, but now she has taken the definitive step to lead the Vic candidacy. The fact is that the work she carried out as a councilor clashes head-on with the party's discourse against international cooperation. What does the party leader, Sílvia Orriols, think about the subsidies for "migration and climate emergency with a gender perspective" that Carrera's portfolio granted?

While traditionalist left-wing and right-wing forces across Europe are "shocked" by the overwhelming victory of Alternative for Germany (AfD) in Saxony-Anhalt, far-right parties are not hiding their joy. Also here at home. Aliança Catalana has shown its happiness for the triumph of the AfD candidate, Ulrich Siegmund, in this state of the former East Germany.

Tomorrow school begins, and it will start with the teachers' strike that the unions already announced when the school year ended, around Saint John's Day. The Government has not managed to deactivate the strike, even though it has had two months to do so. The unions feel strong and are carrying momentum based on real shortcomings, dragged on for a long time, and this protest speed of the unions cannot be stopped with a standard negotiation. Education in Catalonia needs a top-to-bottom reformulation, and the turbulence that will begin tomorrow will continue for several months. We already said it here last week: if there is any public service that requires a generous, country-wide pact, it is education. But today all the front-page headlines are for the victory of Alternative for Germany in Saxony. The far-right wins in a German state talking about closing borders, expelling criminals, and reclaiming Germany for the Germans and not for immigrants. The reasons for this victory resonate here: voters who feel abandoned by the traditional parties, who have become impoverished, who have seen the street landscape change, resentful of what they consider the failure of reunification, who pay many taxes that do not improve public services, etc.This resentment based on real events, but which is conveniently stirred up by the verbal violence of social networks, ends in a protest vote, the one that hurts the most, against the system.The problem is that these parties do not have solutions for these problems, and in the long run they only end up making things worse. And behind the anti-immigration discourse there is an anti-democracy discourse. This vote is an invitation to gradually change democracy for an authoritarian and violent system (Russia, China, Trump's United States) that seems to solve problems because it does not accept the limits of these trifles called laws or human rights.It is true that the usual parties do not provide the best answers either, and for a long time, the normal, ordinary people who used to vote for them have become fed up because they do not listen, and because they do not notice that the wonders they explain during the campaign improve their lives. Agreed, the solution to serious problems is never quick, but the lifelong parties or ideological spaces are more comfortable with dialectical fighting than defending people from powerful private interests. An example: this morning President Illa was interviewed on 3cat and he assured that the government of the Generalitat is assessing whether to take the leader of Aliança Catalana to the Prosecutor's Office, Sílvia Orriols, for her tweets about the fatal attack in Manresa.Ricard Ustrell: Will they report Sílvia Orriols' tweets to the Public Prosecutor's Office as a hate crime?Salvador Illa: Whenever it is observed that there are behaviors that violate the legal framework and that incite hatred, the Government will act. We are assessing it, and if that is the case, in this instance and with everyone we will act the same.

Aliança Catalana presented last Wednesday the lawyer Meritxell Feliu as mayoral candidate for Lleida, who was on the Junts lists in the last European elections after having been a member of Unió and Demòcrates. And on Friday, the Islamophobic party announced what is its latest candidate, Lluís Areny, who will lead the list in Sant Quirze del Vallès. Although in the last elections he ran for an independent list, Areny, the party's communications secretary, was a member of Junts from 2018 to 2021.