Despite the difficulty of keeping up an unbroken rhythm of massive street mobilizations - there have been three since September 11th - the Catalan independence movement once again proved on Saturday in Barcelona that its capacity to get the people out is still intact. Along more than three kilometres of the city's Carrer Marina, from the sea to the Travessera de Gracia, more than 20 city blocks, hundreds of thousands of people - probably more than half a million - took to the streets to call for the freedom of the imprisoned Catalan politicians. Unlike other recent mobilizations, the presence of people who weren't independence supporters was evident through social media. Two years ago, along that same stretch of Carrer Marina, Barcelona's Guàrdia Urbana police counted 750,000 protesters; this year, with a very similar presence on the street, the city police reduced their estimate to 350,000. Between the two dates, a switch in the management of city policing, which is now in the hands of councillor Albert Batlle and of a mayor, Ada Colau, who reached her position with the support of the Catalan branch of the Socialist party and the group of councillors under the unionist Manuel Valls.
Certainly, the figure offered by the Guàrdia Urbana is a provocation and that is why it is good to point it out. But it's a minor thing alongside the exercise in democracy and in showing support for prisoners and relatives at this difficult time, after the Supreme Court ruling that sentenced them to a hundred years in prison, from the nine years for the Jordis - Sànchez and Cuixart - to the 13 for Oriol Junqueras. The independence movement has been responding constantly since the 7th of this month with mobilizations, the vast majority of which have ended without vandalism. In fact, there has been no normality in Catalonia since that date, since infrastructures, cultural life, university life, and associations have all been affected; even the Barça-Madrid football classic scheduled for this weekend has been postponed. The Spanish state's attempt to give an exemplary punishment has only added extra tension to the situation, since the authorities have been shown up in everything from their political inability to open a path to dialogue to the injustice of the convictions for penalties that can neither be proven nor defended in Europe.
The independence movement's mobilization is not going to be subdued via either the action of justice or the police intervention. This has already become perfectly clear. The political conflict needs a political landing site and in the absence of this the problem has gone on hardening for years. The massive demonstration on Saturday again confirms this, even if the arithmeticians of Spanish nationalist media have taken advantage of the Guàrdia Urbana figures to imagine a reduction in the movement's mobilization. Just as a few months ago they asserted, without the slightest doubt, that the Supreme Court verdict would be "an alleviation for the tense political situation in Catalonia". With an election just around the corner, on November 10th, and moreover, one of a type that is always difficult for the independence movement, a Spanish general election, we will see how the sums and differences of the pro-independence parties turn out. On the night of 10th November there will be a great surprise in Catalonia once again.