SPIRIT OF SEPTEMBER 11

As has be­come cus­tom­ary on Sep­tem­ber 11, Cat­alo­nia’s na­tional day, known lo­cally as La Diada, a mass demon­stra­tion in sup­port of the coun­try’s right to self-de­ter­mi­na­tion will take place in the cen­tre of Barcelona (see page 9).

In re­cent times, the protests have not at­tracted the as­tro­nom­i­cal num­bers they did over a decade ago in the run-up to the un­of­fi­cial ref­er­en­dum on in­de­pen­dence. Up to 1.5 mil­lion peo­ple turned out in 2012 com­pared to around 150,000 last year, al­though that’s still a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of peo­ple and much larger than any other demo in Barcelona is ca­pa­ble of at­tract­ing.

Ask­ing around my own cir­cle of fam­ily and friends, only one cou­ple I know are going, as they do every year, to lend their sup­port to the event or­gan­ised by the pro-in­de­pen­dence ANC or­gan­i­sa­tion. Just about every­one else I know went to most of the pre­vi­ous demon­stra­tions but, es­pe­cially since Covid, their en­thu­si­asm for at­tend­ing seems to have dropped off.

That is a shame, not least be­cause I used to enjoy pulling their legs about bring­ing down the gov­ern­ment by tak­ing over an empty mo­tor­way and wav­ing around pieces of coloured card­board. But it’s also a shame be­cause I used to love see­ing the en­thu­si­asm and to­geth­er­ness of these peo­ple who all wanted the same thing, and some­thing which is not un­rea­son­able in a mod­ern democ­racy, the chance to vote to de­cide their coun­try’s fu­ture. And what’s more, they did it with a smile and in a fes­ti­val at­mos­phere that made those ear­lier protests not only non-threat­en­ing but also unique and heart­felt.

Twelve years since the mass demon­stra­tions began, Cat­alo­nia is still not in­de­pen­dent. The one vote on self-de­ter­mi­na­tion that took place was de­clared il­le­gal and the pro-in­de­pen­dence gov­ern­ment that or­gan­ised it was forced into exile or prison. So were the protests a fail­ure? Or, as many claim, is it Cat­alo­nia’s po­lit­i­cal classes who have let the side down? I won’t try to an­swer those ques­tions, but I will note that the spirit that led those peo­ple to turn out in their many thou­sands to de­mand self-de­ter­mi­na­tion is still in­tact today. They may feel de­mo­ti­vated by the lack of po­lit­i­cal progress, they may find it hard to keep up the pres­sure by con­tin­u­ing to at­tend the protests, they may be wait­ing to see what hap­pens next. But one thing I see in the peo­ple around me is that they still think and feel the same way as they did in 2012.

My fam­ily and my neigh­bours will not be going to the protest in Barcelona. How­ever, we will turn out in the vil­lage square to lis­ten to the Sep­tem­ber 11 man­i­festo, there will be music, and we will sit side-by-side as a com­mu­nity to enjoy a bo­ti­far­rada and a few glasses of cava, and as long as peo­ple in Cat­alo­nia keep com­ing to­gether in one form or an­other, the spirit of Sep­tem­ber 11 will con­tinue to live on.

Opin­ion