Six months have now gone by since Catalonia's Declaration of Independence following a vote in the Catalan parliament. As everyone knows, it was a declaration that was not implemented and was followed a few hours later by the dismissal of the Catalan president and government, the suppression of Catalonia's autonomy via article 155 of the Spanish constitution and the diaspora of the core members of the pro-independence leadership, who were either imprisoned or chose to go into exile to avoid being sent to prison. Coincidentally, that 27th October of the Declaration was also a Friday. A long and hard winter was then endured and now the arrival of spring has derailed many predictions. Nothing, however, has changed, politically speaking: the independence movement continues as the motor and the majority force in Catalan politics. And the only force capable of forming a government.
Between 1st October - date of the referendum - and 22nd May - deadline for the swearing-in of a new Catalan president, which if not met will lead to new elections in Catalonia - a total of 234 days will have gone by. Between those two dates: an unimaginably-brutal repression, a day of "national stoppage" which was unimaginable for its scale, a speech by Spain's king that blanked out a very extensive part of Catalan society, an orchestrated campaign by the Spanish government to get leading Spanish companies to shift their business addresses out of Catalonia, predictions that never came true on the catastophe that the Catalan economy was undergoing, the Declaration of Independence, elections called by Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy which ended up delivering an absolute parliamentary majority to the pro-independence block as well as humiliating the PP, the proposal of three candidates to be president of Catalonia which the Spanish state has prevented from being appointed, the humiliation of Spanish justice at international level through the European arrest warrants which have become something of a cul de sac, starting with that being considered in Germany, and the current political scenario, building up to the selection of a provisional Catalan president and an equally provisional government.
1st October, 27th October, 21st December and 22nd May are the four dates from which the new geometric figure of Catalan politics must be melded. Loyalty from the 1st October, referendum day; the sovereignty of Parliament which was asserted in the Declaration of Independence on 27th October; the respect for the ballot box from the election victory of 21st December and 22nd May as the deadline for the creation of the new government. If the four dates do indeed have a common thread and are not just scattered elements, the Catalan political scene which is the heir of the huge mobilizations of these recent years still has many pages to write.
Our politics today undergoes changes in a matter of weeks or even days. On Sunday 25th March, when president Puigdemont was arrested in Germany, it seemed possible that it was the end of the road. On 6th April he was released from custody and today controls the timing, the calendar and the agenda of Catalan politics. Meanwhile, Spain has imploded in its main centre of power, Madrid, the justice system and the Spanish government have been engaged in a battle about the misuse of funds question, and the judicial dossier on Catalonia is being seen, in the eyes of an ever-growing number of people, as a general case against the independence movement.
With its successes and its errors, the independence movement has not become a lesser force and nor does it transmit an image of having been defeated. The issue is very much alive and anyone who has tired of it has got the wrong country.