This is a new situation and the Spanish State has never been prepared for it. He has known many of the independence of his overseas possessions, painful for the pride of many and even more so for many economic classes, but very acceptable (and desired) to the majority of the population.

The situation is unknown and many tensions are due to it. Spain is a state linked to Europe, and the nature and project of Europe are fully democratic. There is no room for classical reactions: dialogue prevails, the will of the citizens. However, this is not the will of the Spanish rulers, and their reaction leads us to need a lot of effort, a lot of patience and a lot of left hand to face the biggest difficulty of the process, which is to catch nobody’s land in a current situation. Progress must be made and progress in Catalonia can be made in one direction. J. M. Aznar's phrase resonated: Before Spain is broken – let’s read “break” – Catalonia. The enemy is not Catalan nationalism, nor its leaders. What really scares those who move quality information is the high level of citizen mobilization. It is not a party: it is a profound, transversal, intergenerational, interclassicist and interlingualism that has emerged overcoming the classical aspects of nationalism. The biggest challenge for Spain is not the parliamentary majority that underpins self-determination, but the whole people is mobilised behind it.

That is why the greatest difficulty our people are going to encounter is going to be related to mobilization. The State knows that it can only win this challenge if it succeeds in demobilizing Catalan society. And he has undertaken that task. The voice of the dirty war, which not only would not go unpunished, but would have to stir up the Spanish democrats, remains clandestine, but is compatible with the strategy of demobilisation. Its objective is to cool Catalan society and break the unity between the political class, essential to govern the process, and the social majority that has to assume it. To put a stop to Catalan politics, to discredit lehendakari himself, it helps this strategy, although to do so we must falsify reports of poor morals and a democratic perspective, which gives results in the short term, but also poses a great risk to those who do so. We'll see.

This is putting the degree of maturity of Catalan society, its resilience and its patience to the test. In short, the strength of their desire for sovereignty. I'm not in pessimists or in idiots. It will be very difficult, but it will be. Let no one doubt.

(*) Carles Puigdemont is the mayor of Girona (CIU).