The years pass and the national beacons of Catalonia remain where they have always been. In Montserrat and in the working class, in the university world and the elderly, in the middle classes and farmers, in the cities and towns. In the basis of the church. The Catalan revolt, that has no precedents in Europe due to its peaceful and festive tone, however much the reality is manipulated to present it in a different way to liquidate the autonomy and cut freedoms, swells more from the base, needing an increasingly repressive attitude to be suffocated, and it expands to the rest of the state, where a certain left is also surprised at the loss of freedoms that seemed guaranteed in Spain as the right to meeting, demonstration and of expression. 1st October has caused the state's boiler to explode, in opting with a single response to the Catalan demand: a repressive one. Very difficult to digest in today's Europe.
Time goes by but things change much less than what it seems. Especially as the years pass. Because the circumstances are practically the same throughout the history of the people. When this Sunday the sermon was pronounced in the 12 noon mass of the Abbey of Montserrat by the Benedictine father, it was like a return to the tunnel of time. To that famous interview of Abbot Escarré in the newspaper Le Monde, 1963, where he openly criticised the policies of General Franco that would cost him exile. Now, surely, it will not be like this, although the slap in the face of the Spanish government will be one that the executive will remember. And of those that hurt. In a sermon that included support for the referendum and the contempt of the state in the institutions of Catalonia, Father Sergi of Assisi Gelpí pronounced from the pulpit some demolishing words: "No to repression, yes to freedom" and faced with the days that come, he asked: "May God helps us to know how to confront these days, always with a peaceful spirit; and also, to be in the place that corresponds to us at this moment of our history". After his words, there followed a long ovation from those assisting.
The response is similar to that offered by the dockworkers in the port of Barcelona, who refused to service the ships hired by Spain's Ministry of Interior to accommodate Civil Guard and National Police officers to prevent the referendum of 1st October. The decision, that has the support of the International Board of Dockers, was agreed in an assembly to "not support the ships of repression". The students of the Catalan universities have already opened a front of demonstrations and collaboration with the organisation of the referendum. The farmers have taken out hundreds of tractors in Lleida. And in this way we could continue to give examples.
In this framemark, the most decisive week of recent times in Catalonia will be addressed. The state has tried to curb and humiliate the Catalan institutions. It has done it via the back door and without the support of Congress. This is the great paradox: the Catalan government responds to a mandate from the Catalan Parliament, whilst the Spanish government hijacks Congress with the decisions it adopts, and when they are debated it remains in a minority. It seems that it does not matter to it at all. What happens is that, in any dispute, it finds strength in repression and in its ideals the best guide to not make a mistake.