They will have to explain it to me slowly, very slowly, those who defend the idea that a failure of the demonstration called by the Catalan National Assembly (ANC) on September 11th, supported by Òmnium Cultural and the Association of Municipalities for Independence (AMI), helps the independence movement. These days I have been looking at the extensive newspaper archive of the last few years and, in terms of political ideology, I have only found headlines referring to independentism, not to the ANC or to one political party or another. The success of the rallies has belonged to the independence movement as a whole, of a public mobilized in defence of national freedoms and with the firm will to aspire to be another state in the European Union. With this ambition as its holy grail, the independence movement filled the streets to overflowing until it became a political phenomenon that was unique in modern Europe, occupied the front pages of the international press, opened numerous radio and television news bulletins across the five continents and, year after year, awakened a stream of sympathy and curiosity from the international community.
Success always has many parents and failure has only one. In those boom years, it is clear that the ANC, Òmnium and the AMI made the political speeches of the day, but the parties were there, in a subordinate position because they were not the key actors, a role that only corresponded to the public. The headlines spoke of hundreds of thousands of people, even of millions, leaving for the small print the references to the speeches that were delivered there. This was the game: success or failure was in the mass attendance or not at the demonstration. The Spanish parties, their media, their usual propagandists have not, up till now, been able to proclaim from Madrid a defeat of independence, and since 2010 - in the demonstration held that July against the Constitutional Court's sentence on the Statute - and from 2012 on every September 11th, the streets of Barcelona seethed. It was a victory for all, of course, with a very minor role played by the political leaders. And a defeat for those who deny Catalonia's national freedoms.
This year, it has all got complicated. What began as an announcement by the Catalan president, Pere Aragonès, that he would not attend the demonstration because the manifesto directly cited the government and the parties, and so his presence made little sense, has ended up turning into an intense and sustained boycott by the Catalan Republican Left (ERC), with the declared absence from the rally of its Catalan ministers and a handful of its main leaders. I noted at the weekend that I thought the declared absence of Aragonès was a mistake, no matter how upset he was with the ANC and some statements by its leaders that he did not like. But for ERC to then contribute to undermining the day of the protest, with a letter to its members included, is even more surprising. Because I don't think the party has anything to gain if the demonstration is a failure, because it won't be a success for the Republicans, nor a failure for the ANC, but rather one for the independence movement. In order to avoid this failure, for example, Òmnium has been heavily involved, going far beyond the immediate issue of the manifesto.
In the last few hours, the third pro-independence party, the CUP, has announced that it will also be present at the demonstration with its main leaders, as government partner Together for Catalonia (Junts) had previously done, muffling the ANC's criticism of the Catalan government and looking to take advantage of ERC's move. Since there is nothing as fierce as sibling rivalry, the pro-independence space, so used to being at odds, will have no other choice if there is no last-minute agreement, than to pass through the middle of this divergence, which is not minor and could have consequences. I'm not referring to a possible rupture in the Catalan government, which would be another derivative, but to something as essential as demonstrating whether or not the independence movement is still sending a message to Spain that it is still here, because nothing has changed, and the reasons to protest are still present. Stubbornly in revolt.