A new show of strength. Emphatically. The Catalan independence movement, which the Spanish state and its government have tried to humiliate by sending all its leaders to prison or into exile, has once again given a demonstration of its great force this weekend. In the same completely peaceful way as ever, many hundreds of thousands of people from the four corners of Catalonia filled the streets of Barcelona and through their presence created a new act of dignity, in response to the repression of some, the submissiveness of others and the equidistance of those that two years ago said that they had arrived to change politics and now seem to have become satisfied just by occupying the comfortable seats of power.
750,000 persons, according to Barcelona city police. Maybe even more. It doesn't actually matter. The massive human tide that called for freedom for the Catalan political prisoners demonstrated the solidity and strength of a demand that the Spanish state has tried to chop down and choke off by all means available, believing that it could make the movement lose ground by its repressive and judicial measures.
Saturday's demonstration showed that the 'indie' movement is still, by a long way, the most important force in Catalan politics. The only force capable of mobilizing a huge mass of citizens who resist the proposition that the democratic battle of all these years has been lost. The ignominy of the fact that, in the year 2017, we have ten political prisoners placed in different Spanish prisons as well as president Carles Puigdemont and four ministers exiled in Brussels has been converted into a rain falling lightly over Catalan politics. And it has also been converted into a reason for the attention by the international media that, on a very regular basis, punctuate their news bulletins with live broadcasts to explain our Catalan reality.
And they ask what the Spanish government will do if the pro-independence majority is repeated, which today seems more than possible. So much so that the elections of 21st December will not be played out on the left-right spectrum, but on the pro-or-anti independence axis. They will also be played out in terms of whats separates the repressors from those who are repressed. The independence movement, with its successes and its errors, has not been budged from its values, values which are recognized all around the world. To want to negotiate, in order to vote, is not an anomaly in today's world.
The electoral game will be decided on this terrain, just as for the elections of September 2015. Ada Colau and the Catalonia in Common group should watch out, because the elections of 21st December will not be comparable to last year's Spanish elections, or even comparable to the Barcelona municipal vote. The electoral fiasco of their result in the legislature which Mariano Rajoy has just terminated will have to be closely examined by the 'Commons' if they are to extract conclusions that will allow them to avoid repeating their miserly fourth place of 2015.