Boos for Illa and Barça: separatism clings to small victories

Faced with the harsh reality they have to live day by day, the separatists have embraced the saying that those who don't find comfort simply don't want to. A year and a half after supporting PSOE in Madrid and PSC in Catalonia, there's no sign of amnesty or special funding. Even less of a referendum.

But it doesn't matter, because they'll always have the whistles against Salvador Illa, Barça as a new boost, or the latest legal battle. Meanwhile, the separatist parties are losing momentum as separatism loses more supporters every day.

In reality, that is irrelevant for parties that have always lived in a parallel universe of masterstrokes and symbolic gestures. Despite the failure of their strategy to support the socialists, they keep selling their narrative while they fall in the polls. In the absence of amnesties and referendums, they have to find comfort in anything.

Pro-independence movement celebrates the boos against Illa

In recent hours, the separatist movement has boasted about booing the President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, at the Palau de la Música. It's not the first time, since Illa was already booed at a casteller festival in Tarragona to the chant of "independence". It seems that the whistles against Illa have become a new triumph for the separatist movement.

Social media have been filled with messages celebrating the act and taking the opportunity to hurl a new string of insults at the President. They forget that Illa is president precisely thanks to the separatist movement. Illa, in turn, is keeping the separatist movement alive in Catalonia.

While they sell the whistles against Illa as a triumph for the separatist movement, ERC and Junts keep supporting President Pedro Sánchez in exchange for nothing or very little. Recently, they've swallowed another failure regarding the official status of Catalan in Europe. ERC and Junts are lowering their demands on transfers just to keep surviving.

Barça, the new resistance

The good culé season has made Barça fashionable again, and this has given narcissism another burning nail to cling to. Barcelonism has always been closely linked to Catalanism, and Barça's golden era coincided with the rise of the Procés. That's why the separatist movement, now at a low point, sees Barça's surge as a new hope.

What may seem frivolous has been spelled out by one of the separatist movement's totems. This is the former vice president of Parliament and national secretary of the ANC, Josep Costa.

In an article called "Barça and the Resistance," he states that "we don't have the tools of a State. But we have Barça, which as a spreader of banal nationalism has a power that many empires would envy." 

Costa says that "we are in a moment of national resistance." He also says that "we have a resilient country that always knows how to get back up and pass on to the next generation a legacy worth fighting for." That's why he firmly states that "if Barça lives, Catalonia will live."

There will always be Laura Borràs

If the boos against Illa and Barça fail, there will always be Laura Borràs. Or the latest legal battle that allows the separatist movement to don the victimhood they are used to. In recent hours, the most unilateralist separatists have closed ranks around their great myth, Laura Borràs, to once again attack the Spanish justice system.

Although the separatist movement's legal strategy has been proven unsuccessful, the separatists insist on continuing down that path. Their lawsuits with the State are getting less and less attention both among their own base and outside our borders.