Eight years on from the dramatic scenes of October 2017, there is still no shared definition of what the Catalan ‘Procés’ truly was. For some, it was a democratic uprising; for others, a constitutional crisis that fractured Spanish politics.
The story begins with the 2012 Diada, the first organised by the Assemblea Nacional Catalana (ANC), which mobilised hundreds of thousands demanding independence. From there, the momentum grew, with independence dominating Catalonia’s political agenda and rippling across Spain.
The high point came on 1 October 2017, when more than two million people defied court rulings to participate in a banned referendum on secession. Images of police charges against voters made global headlines, cementing the day as the defining symbol of the movement.
The chapter effectively closed on 12 May 2024, when pro-independence parties lost their majority in both the Catalan Parliament and Government. That electoral shift marked the end of more than a decade where independence was the central axis of Catalan politics. Yet the debates it stirred, about sovereignty, democracy and the limits of Spain’s constitutional framework, remain unresolved.
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