The intensity of the response to the verdict in the Supreme Court trial of 12 Catalan pro-independence leaders, which will be announced in the first half of October, will provide the key thermometer reading for the new political term that begins formally next week. Before that, there will be a demonstration for Catalonia's national day, the Diada, which seems to have overcome the confusing phase of public discrepancies, and which seems on the way to being another new mass mobilization of Catalan independence supporters. It would be the eighth consecutive year that hundreds of thousands of Catalans mobilize on September 11th - in fact, in all cases above one million, except for 2016 when there were 900,000 people present - and, obviously, a boost for the argument which most favours a new challenge to the Spanish state.
The independence movement, so used to dedicating the month of August to family squabbles, seems to have overcome the dilemma between confrontation or dialogue that marked the month of July. Basically because the latter option requires two sides and there seems to be no one in the Spanish camp who wants to undertake such a process with the independence movement. The latest position set out by the secretary general of the Catalan Republican Left (ERC), Marta Rovira, from her exile in Geneva, has dampened down pointless debates. The same can be said of the meeting being held in the Swiss city this weekend, with the presence of president Carles Puigdemont and Rovira, along with the pro-independence parliamentary groups in the Catalan chamber, and civil society groups the ANC and Òmnium, and from which a consensus must be found for the month of October.
The consensus of the pro-independence parties in the response to the judges' verdict will in turn influence the future of the Catalan legislature. Without the left-wing pro-independence party CUP becoming thoroughly and comfortably involved in the response that parties, associations, government, parliament and municipal councils make to the Supreme Court's ruling, it will be difficult to pass a Catalan government budget, which is essential, and to extend the legislature beyond next spring. President Quim Torra set a direction that he defined as confrontation in his discourse at Prada de Conflent in mid-August and next Thursday he has a speech scheduled in Madrid. We'll have to wait and see how compatible words will be with deeds, in a Catalan government which is a coalition and contains many different points of view.