Although the blood didn't reach the river, the public reprimand from the Catalan National Assembly (ANC) towards the pro-independence parties for their proven inability to constitute a government, 80 days after last year's Catalan election, has been important. It must be the first time that the ANC has explicitly brought its demands for a Republic up against the disagreement between Junts per Catalunya, Esquerra Republicana and the CUP. The entity which, since 2012, has organised the large demonstrations in Catalonia, has this Sunday brought together some 45,000 people, according to Barcelona's Urban Guard, in a climate much more of anger than of satisfaction and much more of reproach than of support. A crack has opened up between the most important pro-independence entity in Catalonia and the pro-independence parties, all the more so given that among the crowds was former ANC president Carme Forcadell, who famously urged Artur Mas, then president of Catalonia, to put out ballot boxes for a referendum.
This Sunday, the staging of different members of the public who, in one way or another, have suffered the Spanish state's repression and who, one after the other, in short speeches from the stage, complained that they had taken risks and that now they want their representatives to do the same, was the prelude for one of the strongest statements heard from a member of the ANC's board. Jordi Pairó, from the platform, lashed out at the pro-independence parties: "what the f*** is going on that we're not being told about!?" It was one of the criticisms (there were more) which the representatives of the pro-independence parties had to listen to. Surely prewarned, fewer attended than on other occasions, something very clear from the front rows where, with the exceptions of Jordi Turull and Josep Rull, the senior representatives of the parties in the Parliament were absent.
In the coming weeks ANC's leadership will be renewed after saying farewell in this Sunday's event. There will also have to be developments in the forming of the Catalan government which CUP refuses to support, disagreeing over the released negotiated document. And meanwhile, in the streets, the protests are directed at the parties, an equation which, far from offering a solution to the situation, ends up becoming a whole string of criticism. And a clear perception that the narrative, which has been the great strength of the independence movement, has serious problems fitting together, being pulled one way and another from Brussels, from Estremera prison and from Barcelona. And the Catalan government? The most advisable thing is starting to be to not make predictions.