I know how to behave. Let's say, for example, that I go to the National Theatre of Catalonia. I know the tacitly choreographed protocol and I can follow it to the letter. I know which version of myself is welcome, which fits in and doesn't cause discomfort, I know which identity to perform to be read: a little dark but without overdoing it, a little flashy but without overdoing it, I have to be that note that gives a certain twist, a very slight one, to the general score. Everything else remains out of focus. No one has explicitly asked me, but I have understood that otherness has no place here.I have lived in this country for 22 years, I have level C in Catalan, almost one hundred percent of my affective network is Catalan, I have a Catalan son... but I am still perceived as a migrant person. They continue to speak to me in Spanish and congratulate me on my "nice" accent. But it's okay, I can manage that. The complex part comes on the professional level: my place, perennial, seems to be the margin. This place where the system places me does not come from personal exclusions perpetrated by individual agents, but is the structure. And, let it be said here, mea culpa, it is also an ambiguity that is not accidental, but a survival strategy.Somehow, this "being where I can be read" that I sometimes perform is what W.E.B. Du Bois defined as double consciousness. Migrant people always look at ourselves through the eyes of others, who, as a reading mass of acceptable alterities, are the ones who measure the value of our presence. We are looked at under a catalog of options ranging from curiosity to condescension. The splitting is, without a doubt, exhausting: it is me but it is also the version that the viewer needs to feel diverse without feeling questioned. I interpret my own identity.

In diversity policies, work is almost always done out of social urgency, often imposed by external causes. But today we need to talk about a different urgency, one that is born from our own deficits: what I call the Factor M (migration factor) of Catalonia's collective memory.Catalonia has just reached the historic milestone of 8 million inhabitants. It is a far-reaching transformation, but also a direct challenge: can everyone really feel part of this "us"? Can those who don't see their history reflected anywhere say "we are 8 million"?This urgency is manifested in three deep divides that segment our society:1. Neighborhood emptiness. The founders of our neighborhoods —those migrants from the 50s and 60s— are building their memory of heroic struggle. This history, however, seems to end with them. Today, these neighborhoods are full of new international migrants who have been giving them life for more than two decades, but who live parallel lives. They share the space, but not the history; they do not come to be fully recognized as neighbors, nor do they join associations to "build the neighborhood." This demographic change is often experienced with resistance and distrust, a scenario that feeds those who want to create fragmentation.2. The academic void. If we take the history books of Catalonia, migrations are practically non-existent; it's as if they never happened. How can we educate in a sense of belonging if the official narrative ignores the roots of more than half of the class? The children of Moroccans, Filipinos, or Ecuadorians, who are Catalans, are they not part of our history? If school explains a history to them where they appear as anomalies, we are telling them they are subordinates, not protagonists of the country where they live.3. The political vacuum. We are witnessing the advent of highly mixophobic parties that manipulate data to invent a past of non-existent homogeneity. They seek a society that does not negotiate with diversity, but rather criminalizes it, evoking past times of persecution against minorities. This discourse gains followers precisely because there is no solid public narrative about the memory of migrations — the M Factor — to contradict it.We must be brave in self-criticism: the national identity we are building cannot leave anyone behind. Catalanism cannot be an exclusive project, reserved for an elite that looks at diversity from a distance. Because without memory, identity is fragile: an identity without memory is not identity. If a citizen does not find their trajectory reflected in the official narrative, in history museums, or in the nomenclature, they will hardly feel that Catalonia's future project is also theirs. Memory is not just remembering; it is recognizing ourselves as equals in the craft of history.

The repeated public debates about who is Catalan, or what it means to be Catalan, have little to do with wanting to understand Catalan society. These are discussions that arise from political confrontations, in which each participant uses their definition to define themselves and distance themselves from the adversary. Therefore, nothing can be known about Catalans and their nation, and all the interest lies in how we are used to further the respective political projects. These are debates that occur intermittently in all nations, but here they are endemic.

There was a concentration of therians at the Arc de Triomf in Barcelona. A month ago we didn't know what this word meant, and now we all do. People who "feel" like animals, whether dogs, horses, or cats (the most common). That is, they usually feel like mammals or reptiles. Rarely insects. There are no therians fly or louse. The word is a neologism that, like all things to be legitimized and perpetuated, comes from Greek.Therianthropia comes from therion (animal) and anthropos (human).

Before becoming a mother, I had very firm convictions about who I was and what my path would be. I didn't imagine the extent to which motherhood transforms you completely, the extent to which I myself would become a different person. I thought it would be harder for me to stop prioritizing myself, and that I would sometimes experience it with unease or as a loss.

At the heart of the independence movement was the desire to relegate identity-based and victim-blaming nationalism—in other words, the worst face of Pujolism, the Ferrussola face—to the background. The key contribution in this regard, from the intellectual sphere, came from the philosopher Xavier Rubert de Ventós, with his work From identity to independence, from 1999, a decade before the start of the Process. That book had a foreword by his friend Pasqual Maragall, who still declared himself a federalist. Over the years, Rubert de Ventós's essay would end up leading Maragallism and part of the PSC to pro-sovereignty positions.

When I appealed last week to a new intelligence—I could also have said a new imaginary—to refer to the migration processes our country is experiencing, what I meant was that we must know how to speak about social reality appropriately. That there are old concepts that don't fit the new realities. That concepts should be adapted to reality, not the other way around. That we must think in a way that brings us as close as possible to the facts—and, if possible, to the truth—especially those that are most conflicting and disturbing to us. That we must avoid masking or mystifying reality, whether it's done intentionally to make it more obvious or in bad faith to alarm us and take advantage of it.