It had an important role and has become an opni, an unidentified political object. The Catalan National Assembly (ANC) appears today as a fractured organization – thirteen members of the secretariat and the vice president of the entity have resigned – without a clear strategy and without the ability to convene that it had before October 1, 2017. The ANC It was the great accelerator of the procés (under the anti-political slogan “tenim pressa”), with the approval of the pro-independence parties, which tried to influence the leadership of this entity while being shamelessly influenced and overwhelmed by its messages and strategies.
“President, posi les urnes” was a phrase by Carme Forcadell that made a fortune and that shows the strong ascendancy of the ANC over the institutional system. Forcadell pronounced it as president of the entity in the speech that closed the demonstration on September 11, 2014, two months before the participatory consultation on November 9, that referendum trial organized by the Generalitat that went so well that it upset the Government Rajoy, and created the false sensation within the independence movement that everything would be easier than it seemed. From that moment on, the State really got to work to avoid, as it were, what had been mistakenly labeled as “heat”.
The procés is already history, although the territorial conflict – it is evident – is still open. Ask the Supreme Court. The ANC crisis is a clear symptom of the exhaustion of the procesista model, neither more nor less. Although the clash between critics and pro-government supporters occurs because Dolors Feliu – the current president of the entity – wants to carry out a “civic list” that is presented to the next Catalan elections, in the background there are other things. For example, there is the nostalgia for a mystified activist purity, as well as the criticism of the autonomous realism of the ERC, Junts and the CUP, which normally participate in a playing field that is marked by the regulatory limits controlled by the State. Paradoxically, Feliu is a senior official of the Generalitat with old converging sympathies, someone who perfectly knows the machinery –and the obligations– of self-government. The speech of the president of the ANC oozes a harsh disappointment in the political world from which she comes.
The division in the ANC underlines the general division that the entire independence movement is experiencing. Each one has made his bet. The processism was based on a supposed transversality, which was tangible at the bases of the movement but which was never solid among the leading leaderships, although the embrace between Artur Mas and David Fernández hinted at an extraordinary agreement. That print –which generated so much joy and so much reproach– was more a hologram of good intentions than a metaphor for a concurrence of forces that, in reality, always put their respective interests first.
The ANC has become an opni without a compass and without fuel. It can crash onto any field at any time.
