The people are fed up with Catalonia's independence process and there's fatigue among its supporters. This annual mantra was served up this Sunday by the head of the opposition in the Catalan Parliament, Carlos Carrizosa (Ciudadanos), to explain why, for the moment, 25% fewer people have signed up for this year's demonstration on 11th September. The same idea was to be read enthusiastically in the unionist press from Madrid and Barcelona. There are many reasons for this fall (one-off or definitive? - we'll see) but among them, far more important are the division, the absence of strategy, the confrontation between the political parties, the lack of leadership, the debate over confrontation or dialogue with Spain and even the experience of the last few years that, in the end the rally is a tide of citizens, than a supposed fatigue.
The independence movement has had to go through many things over the last few years: an unprecedented police and legal repression, including the imprisonment or exile of its main political and social leaders; a suffocating control of the Catalan government's finances which gives the false impression that the public's needs are disregarded; the scorn for all Catalonia's institutions by people from the head of state, who in 2016 already refused to meet then speaker of the Parliament Carme Forcadell and who did the same in 2018 with Roger Torrent, to the prime minister, who neither receives nor replies to president Torra's letters. This situation without strong leaders in the institutions has become especially difficult and tough.
There are hints, however, that this situation, temporary, could be reaching an end and that the unitary bodies are in a position to put a proposal to break the current paralysis on the table. The Council for the Republic with its headquarters in Waterloo and the roundtable of political parties meeting in Geneva are reportedly basically in agreement over the road map for the coming months. Òmnium and the ANC have also taken part.
In any case, the independence movement knows that Catalonia's political year begins on 11th September. Cs, PSC and PP, who hope that Carrizosa is right, know this too. Maturity is shown, above all, when things are difficult. And the 11th September Diada demonstration is good evidence of this.