Five years have passed since that day that shook the country. Personally I have always counted it as an episode of mass mobilization. An act of powerful and singular popular reaffirmation. Today, it is difficult to find a comparable mobilizing process in the European context: more than two million people of all ages and conditions went to schools and voting centers, and they did so in a scenario with components of disobedience, some putting even the body.
This act of sovereignty, together with the heavy police charges that occurred, placed Catalonia, and the national-territorial dispute that Spain is experiencing, on the European and international map. That October 1 and 3, the independence and sovereignty cause generated sympathy and solidarity throughout the planet. An opportunity gap was opened to force a negotiation with the State with international recognition and involvement. To achieve, for example, the institutional recognition of a ‘de facto’ reality: the plurinational nature of the State. And therefore, facilitate the exercise of a referendum by drawing inspiration from the experiences of Quebec and Scotland.
Things went in other directions, but the majority of political forces -with greater or lesser emphasis- have reached the conclusion that political problems must be solved politically, that there are no shortcuts. And that the crisis of the autonomous model has come to stay. Now, it is also true that there has been a lot of reflection, criticism and self-criticism on the Catalan side but on the state counterpart at that time it has hardly been made explicit.
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Five years later, the situation has eased. Now, that the cycle of the ‘procés’ has been closed (the wave transits from 11-S, 2012 to 21-D, 2017) does not mean that the national-territorial issue has been resolved. And if we do not want to find ourselves in a dead end again, we will have to work on filling a dialogue table with content that is still advancing with lead feet.
The recovery by the ‘president’ Pere Aragonès of the flag of the agreed referendum, raised, among others, by one of the political formations that occupies the Spanish Executive -Podemos-, can be a good way out. Surely it is the one that was also looking for Carles Puigdemont on 10-O with the temporary suspension of the DUI. It will take, yes, a cool head and a long look.