Fatalism is a terrible recipe that blocks action. Without falling into naive optimism, there is only one way to face the future: rolling up one's sleeves. Confronting the complicated moment we are living in head-on, using the rearview mirror to learn from the mistakes of the past, but with a long-term view, looking forward. What kind of Catalonia do we want to leave to the next generations? What country do we imagine for 2050? The honest answer to this question is what, despite all the setbacks, continues to mobilize individual and collective energies with surprising strength and creativity. There are many who are doing good work. Giving them a voice and visibility is what we do at ARA on this National Day.

The afternoon begins dully with a heat that only seems tolerable because the permanent state of exception of the climate has forced us to lower our standards. It is a public holiday Friday and Catalan politics has accumulated so many years of apathy that I admit I arrive loaded with preventive pessimism at Plaça Universitat, and I sink into prejudice when I find the ANC stalls full of white hair. Then I cling to the lifeline of a group of teenagers with estelades who pass by me. They are shy, they explain to me that they have come down by train from Os de Balaguer and say they don't know much about politics. To shake them up a bit, I ask them to compare this Diada with the previous ones they have experienced, and they all agree on one point: "There are more young people than ever." As I get closer to the heart of the matter, I realize they are absolutely right: I haven't missed a single protest since 2012 and I had never seen so many young people. Although the rational part of my brain knows that the absolute number cannot be compared to that of the epic years, the impression of seeing a proportion of young people higher than that of older people completely changes the emotional color of the Diada.

1. Since life flies by, we have already celebrated fifty Diades in democracy and have heard nearly forty televised messages from the President of the Generalitat. The commemoration of this year's September 11th, however, will not go down in history. Neither will Salvador Illa's speech. In line with a government grafted with a presidential tone, it was six minutes of low-profile arguments, filled with good intentions, logical doses of common sense, a practiced emptiness, and that's that. If I had to pick just one sentence from everything Illa said, I would be clear: “No one is more Catalan than anyone else.” It made me think. Is it true that no one is more Catalan than anyone else? Does it not matter where we come from? Does it not depend on the right, or the left? Nor on religion or integration? Does it not depend on the flags we hang (or no longer hang) on the balcony? Nor on the language we speak? Nor on the goals we celebrate in the street? Nor on whether we know, or not, who Mossèn Cinto was? Nor on whether we have TV3 tuned in? Or whether there is no need to have it on the remote because there are 30% of Catalans (who are no less Catalan than anyone else) who never watch it, on principle. Put another way, and to continue with the simile, “no one is more Spanish than anyone else”? To belong to a place, beyond being attended to in any public hospital, perhaps you have to feel like you belong to it. This would be a possible criterion. Everyone can answer this question that has arisen following Salvador Illa's statement.