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.

The first law that the Catalan Parliament passed in 1980, with self-government restored, was to declare September 11th "Catalonia's national holiday." That decision received unanimous support from the Catalan parliament, including the conservative UCD (United Left) party, and since then, neither the Popular Alliance nor the Popular Party, after its refoundation, ever questioned the fact that the Diada was to commemorate the fall of Barcelona to the Bourbon troops in the War of the Spanish Succession, which led to the loss of laws, as well as of its language and customs. Everything fell apart two years before the Trial, when in 2010 a protest atmosphere was already emerging that the Popular Party did not believe was "for all Catalans." Three years later, the PP withdrew from the Generalitat's events. This year, it was ratified in a self-exclusion that has been going on for more than a decade and which, as the party explained this Friday, will last throughout the Salvador Illa era, at least as long as their alliances with independentists continue. In this way, the Popular Party (PP) places itself alongside Vox in an isolation that Ciudadanos also held until a few years ago.

There was one element during this September 11th that united the early morning institutional events with the tribute to Rafael Casanova—with the PSC government leading the party—and the much less crowded ANC pro-independence demonstration in the afternoon. A common thread that hadn't operated so clearly between Catalan nationalism and the independence movement for some time: the defense of Catalan. The language was the main protagonist of the day—surely the Catalan High Court bears some responsibility—and the main meeting point for political actors. Reality has become like a sock in a decade, given that the health of Catalan was a neglected issue during the Process. Even within the independence movement, some began to use Spanish frequently to supposedly attract new voters. And among those opposed to independence, an electoral competition also erupted over who was more bilingual (something that still persists between the PP and the far-right Vox).

Before I begin writing this chronicle, I'll plaster over all the analogies I've been pointing out throughout the day between the rain and the mood of the independence movement. Let it be known that so much rain has fallen and I've spent so much time sheltered under stalls of self-centered artisan cheeses and initiatives. I've had to face this Diada without an umbrella because, like so many others with whom I'll exchange angry, empathetic glances, I belong to a group of idiots who prefer to trust their cell phone screens rather than their eyes.

The sky on September 11th in Barcelona, ​​not because it's centralist but because it's where I live and what's on my mind, outlined from morning until morning the mood with which so many people faced a new Diada. Or Díada, according to the Spanish government. A gray sky, with periods of sunshine; heavy rain, with periods of drizzle. The days of the great independence demonstrations are long gone, and nostalgia is easily triggered. In both senses. The streets belong to state repression and the political incapacity of leaders who had the people but lacked the tools. We gained a few days valuable to remember but fruitless for the present. Recriminations don't advance anything; in fact, they break relationships and hinder any reconciliation. Personalisms bring nothing good to a collective movement that doesn't need martyrs but sound strategies. I don't say this as an easy way. Nor as if the human condition constantly throws us over all kinds of obstacles. But before, we didn't believe it would be easy to mobilize two million people, and people came out to shake the foundations of a political structure that continues to show us the path to dissolution. September 11th has been cloudy for a while, and autumns have stopped being warm.

The independence movement is losing a sheet with every wash. After losing its absolute majority in Parliament, disenchantment is also taking its toll on the streets. The independence movement has once again brought thousands of people out onto the streets for the Diada, but the discouragement caused by the paralysis of the process has resulted in a drop in participation. While last year 60,000 people demonstrated in downtown Barcelona, ​​this year it was half that number, around 28,000 according to the Guardia Urbana (City Police). The ANC (National Action Party) estimated the number of attendees at 100,000 in Barcelona, ​​​​Girona, ​​and Tortosa and emphasized that bad weather could also have influenced the decline in the mobilization. Be that as it may, the independence movement is going through a difficult time.

We propose a graphic follow-up of the National Day of Catalonia 2025We begin early this morning with the floral offering at the Rafael Casanova monument, attended by authorities and organizations. Throughout the day, we will continue with rallies and other official celebrations. The three demonstrations Simultaneous demonstrations in Barcelona, ​​​​Tortosa and Girona, called by the main pro-independence entities, will be held at 5:14 p.m., followed by the institutional ceremony at the Teatre Nacional de Catalunya, followed by concerts on Passeig de Lluís Companys.

If a decade ago, on September 11th before the so-called plebiscite elections, the leaders of the Process had been explained how the film they were just beginning to play would end, they probably would have thought twice about starting that roadmap. We will never know if, had a time machine allowed them to see the Catalonia of 2025, they would have made the same decisions they made on the 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th... The reality of the Principality, ten years later, is very different from what it was a decade ago: 2015 bears no resemblance to the composition of the Catalan chamber today. Now, there is no pro-independence majority in the Parliament, and it has been a year since Salvador Illa's government, which has pulled the PSC (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) out of its lowest ebb and flow to occupy power in the country's main institutions, from the Palau de la Generalitat (the Catalan Government's Palace)—for the first time alone—to Barcelona City Hall. What Gabriel Rufián said in Madrid ("in eighteen months I'll leave my seat" to return to the Catalan Republic) is a distant memory now that Junts and Esquerra hold the key to governability in Spain. What's more, now that the two main pro-independence parties have become a new driving force for state reform, thanks to the PSOE and Sumar. A political framework that resembles Jordi Pujol's early years of the hatching of fish than Pasqual Maragall's attempt to reform the Statute of Autonomy and the one that followed.

Having completed the first year of his term, Salvador Illa faces his second Diada and his second year as president of the Generalitat with several issues on the table awaiting resolution. Not least, the new funding agreement with the Catalan Left (ESC), which at this point is stalled. The next Generalitat budget and, consequently, the health of the Catalan (and state) legislature depend on the progress made on this issue. Therefore, it is not inconsequential that Isla wanted one of the messages of his institutional speech this September 11th to be a demand for Catalan self-government, but also the "deployment" of the powers that "fall to it" in Catalonia. "Catalonia wants to exercise its self-government with the resources that correspond to it to improve the lives of Catalans, to contribute to shared prosperity with the rest of Spain, and to help guarantee Europe's strategic autonomy," he argued. The Catalan socialists defend, among other things, applying the principle of ordinality, an issue that the Spanish government has not assumed.

The meeting between the President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, and the former President of the Generalitat in exile, Carles Puigdemont, has marked a before and after in the relationship between two worlds, that of constitutionalism and that of independence, which have been at odds (or at least, quite separate) since 2017. Whether or not the meeting between the two leaders will bring about a change in relations between the Socialists and the regional council members remains to be seen, but what it does seem to herald is a reconciliation between the two spaces—language, culture, and Catalan national identity—within political Catalanism. This image of unity was witnessed this Wednesday, the eve of Catalonia's National Day, at the solemn flag-raising ceremony in the Parliament. It was also witnessed at the subsequent reception, with more than 400 guests, a tradition that the Catalan parliament is bringing back this year and that was celebrated between 1980 and 2008.

The Catalan Alliance was able to lay the floral offering at the Fossar de les Moreres for the first time without incident. Last year, the pro-independence left disrupted the far-right party's event when a hundred young anti-fascists burst in shouting and insulting, but this year the event took place without incident. The Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan Police) deployed riot police at all entrances and blocked the passage of the forty members of Arran who wanted to access the Fossar. The young anti-fascists were only able to unfurl a banner on Passeig del Born reading "At the Fossar de les Moreres we bury the traitors, we turn the far right," while the event proceeded normally.

For at least fifteen years, after the summer break, whether for pleasure or on demand, I've been writing an article about the Diada. It's become a habit, and it's as if for one day the hunting season has opened for an invisible elephant, the famous elephant in the room that the Diada makes more present. It's its celebration. Since I have a day of the week assigned to me, depending on the calendar, the article is published before or after the Diada. This year, it will be printed on the eleventh.

Silvia Orriols will be attending the Catalan National Day demonstration in Barcelona. The leader of the Catalan Alliance had not attended since becoming mayor of Ripoll and subsequently being elected to the Parliament. However, this year she has decided to visit the Catalan capital, according to sources within the party confirmed to ARA, although both the ANC and Òmnium, the main organizers of the mobilization, have distanced themselves from the party due to its xenophobic stances.

The celebration of Catalonia's National Day will kick off on September 10th with a new feature: the solemn flag-raising ceremony at the Parliament, presided over by the Speakers of the Parliament and the Generalitat, Josep Rull and Salvador Illa, and the Mayor of Barcelona, ​​Jaume Collboni. The flag will fly year-round next to the Palau del Parlament. In the afternoon, the ANC (Catalan National Assembly), Òmnium (Union of Catalonia), the Council of the Republic, the Intersindical (Union of Trade Unions), and the Ciemen (Ciemen) will promote the traditional Diada demonstration to denounce, this year, tax plunder, the minoritization of the Catalan language, and the denationalization of Catalonia.

A few days before the celebration of the Diada, the president of the National Assembly of Catalonia, Lluís Llach, emphasizes the need for civil society to take the initiative in pressuring political parties to achieve independence.

The Diada calls us once again to think about ourselves as a people, to decide what we want to be in the coming years. It's beginning to be time to ask ourselves again where we want to go, and to do so calmly, without exclusions or arguments, but rather through reasoning, one of our precious words that calls us to a well-crafted and shared reason. Our national holiday commemorates a setback, but Catalonia has always grown in the face of defeat: we think, if not of the great growth in the 18th century, then just after 1714, as Pierre Vilar taught us.

On his first Diada, Salvador Illa had been landing at the Palau de la Generalitat for just over a month and decided maintain the bulk of the events that Pere Aragonès's executive had preparedThis year's event will be the first to which the Socialist leader has put his stamp, that of "diversity, plurality, and unity" in Catalonia. The Catalan government presented this Tuesday the institutional events for this September 11th, which will be represented in a poster—the work of artists Ignasi Roviró, Roger Orriols, and Jordi Farrés, who form the Partee creative studio—in which they have "reinterpreted" the four Catalan stripes with diverse artistic expressions. "The four Catalan stripes reflect the diversity, plurality, and unity that unite us as a country," defended the Minister of Territory and Government spokesperson, Sílvia Paneque, at a press conference following the executive council meeting.

This year, Catalonia's National Day falls on a Thursday, during a week in which there is a plenary session in Congress. This situation already occurred last year, causing Junts deputies to leave the lower house en masse to attend the September 11 demonstration. At a time when the Spanish government is juggling to secure parliamentary majorities, the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) has already anticipated potential scares: it has requested a reorganisation of the calendar and freed up Thursday the 11th, arguing that Catalan politicians who wish to attend will be able to attend the Diada. However, September 11th is also the day that Pedro Sánchez's wife, Begoña Gómez, will testify before Judge Peinado regarding the case opened against her for alleged embezzlement. The PP and Vox have supported the theory that the Socialist proposal responds precisely to this reason.

In June and July 2018, the festival was held on the National Mall in Washington DC, between the Capitol and the monument dedicated to the first American president. Catalonia: tradition and creativity from the Mediterranean, promoted and produced by the Ministry of Culture but also by the Smithsonian Folklife Festival. A year ago, preparations were underway just months before the October 1 referendum, and the nervousness of the Spanish embassy in the U.S. was evident: explanatory letters, demands for justification of budgets, interventions at every public event... These were extremely tense times, as the Smithsonian Foundation's own curator, Michael Att, knows.they are building human towers for democracy", he wrote), but the festival's celebration was impeccable. An exhibition of castles, sardanas, giants and big-heads, cultural enterprises, musical performances, and a long etcetera. But along the route of stops on the grass were the buildings of the National Museum of History and Culture, Air and Space, and the National Museum of the American Indian, all of them (and others) promoted by the Smithsonian Foundation, and all of them now the subject of discursive revision by Donald Trump.

The independence movement is repeating last year's formula, and on September 11th the mobilization for Catalonia's National Day will once again be decentralized. This year there will be demonstrations in Barcelona, Girona, and Tortosa under the slogan More reasons than ever. Independence. This was announced by the organizers of the Barcelona Palace Plan, who hope to present the demonstration with a "social content" and have presented the defense of language and culture as the main reasons for participating. During the presentation, the president of the ANC, Lluís Llach, called for mobilization so that the Diada may be "a clamor that predicts the definitive resumption" of Catalonia's national liberation and "a celebration of reunion to restart the struggle."