There was and there is a debate very long around when did the political cycle begin that everyone already identifies with the name of ‘procés’. Most commentators place it in that ruling of the Constitutional Court that cut some of the articles of the Statute approved in 2010. There are those who define its beginning with holding popular consultations on independence that were celebrated starting in 2009. Others, on the other hand, see when it all began in the fear that the Government of Artur Mas had when the mobilizations that converged in the 15-M put their austerity policies in check. There are even those who, more daring and with more attention to the dimension of the partisan struggle in the field of Catalan nationalism, who locate the roots of the ‘procés’ in the loss of the autonomous government by CiU in 2003 and, later, in the pro-independence twist started by the Pujolismo party as of 2007. Surely the debate will continue, and surely also the possible answers have to do with the element that is considered most characteristic of the whole phenomenon, if popular mobilization, partisan struggle either the echoes of the identity winds that the whole of societies, not only ‘Western’, are experiencing at least since the great financial crisis of 2008.
However, there is no doubt that the massive pro-independence outing took place as of Diada 2012 with that imposing demonstration that occupied the streets of Barcelona in an almost surprising way in terms of its size. In these days, then, a ten-year cycle is finally completed in which that appointment –before 2012, heritage or institutional, or of a clearly minority historical independence movement–, has been marking the beginning of the political course in Catalonia and giving indications about the ability to generate empathy around the independence cause.
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In this sense, there is no doubt that the Dyads of the last ten years have drawn a clearly descending parable. Not so much -and certainly not only- because of the number of people that the pro-independence entities have been able to gather year after year, but because of the type of messages sent, of actors committed to the mobilization, and, ultimately, of what, with a Anglo-Saxon expression, one would say mood of the manifestation, that is to say the sensations and the emotions that emerge from it.
So it has passed of mobilizations that projected joy, inclusivity and future projects to, progressively, mobilizations that transmit tension and resentment. There is no doubt that the events –some undoubtedly dramatic– that have been taking place have influenced this: the mobilizations up to 2015 have clearly marked an ascending climax, to the extent that –and with the success of 9N in the middle–, what was being projected from the independence movement was the will to build a new reality without too many concretions, and, therefore, passable by a vast majority of people. Things began to go wrong after the investiture of Carles Puigdemont and the commitment to a unilateral referendum. In this way, part of those who had accompanied the independence movement were expelled and some mobilizations were proposed that –although they always proved to be absolutely peaceful– were certainly more tense, since a significant part (rather a majority) of the citizenry began to perceive them as hostile, exclusionary. The events of October and, above all, the arrest or departure from the country of some pro-independence leaders, as well as, especially, the convictions of some of them and their subsequent pardons, resulted in a double phenomenon: the radicalization of the messages of those who were still mobilized and, at the same time, the demobilization of the less convinced. And to this day, after two years of the pandemic, with worrying inflation, divided and politically inoperative pro-independence parties, the 2022 Diada is announced as the least inclusive of all (not even the Republicans will participate), but, above all, clearly marked by sad passions.