If any nationalist who yesterday went out to the street carrying a torch read the headline of this article, he wouldn't agree at all. For him, surrounded by other nationalists equally carrying torches (Ah, what memories of that Germany of the thirties of the last century!) The world would be transforming in front of him. In the same way, if some more lazy nationalist remained locked up at home yesterday watching TV3, he would conclude that the world revolved around that date. The images of the nationalist television looped the hits that the police stroke two years earlier to those voters who were reluctant to let them pass or to leave the "voting" centers. Beats, blows and more blows (except the most important, which was the coup d'etat), interviews with adorable old ladies who told how much they had hurt the bruises and portentous explanatory and detailed graphs analyzing the statistically most affected areas of the body, being the neck, the thighs.. TV3 did the unspeakable to transfer to each viewer the pain of the victims and point to a single culprit. No, it wasn't Junqueras and Puigdemont, who had encouraged their faithful to lock their children all weekend in schools to get in the way of the police and encouraged them to confront and receive the martyring blows to get a nice picture. Nor was the last culprit the Spanish police nor the clumsy government of the Popular Party embodied in Mariano Rajoy, nor the "perfidious" King Bourbon who had had the audacity to say that the illegal referendum was a challenge to democracy. The culprit was Spain itself, as an indivisible concept. Each of its inhabitants, each citizen who considered himself Spanish was behind every painful blow received by the nationalists ... sorry, for the "people of Catalonia".

However, this third October First, we the Catalans mostly did "zapping". A metaphorical zapping is understood. People got up in the morning to go to work and that was what they did. Some approached the accesses to the Barcelona lanes with some apprehension, waiting for some hyperventilated to park his car in the access and lay on the floor, as on other occasions, giving us an angry morning. None of that happened. We went to work and returned home with the work done.

Of course there were demonstrations, and smoke, fire and violence. According to the figures provided by the Urban Guard, 18,000 people concentrated to honor the "Day of the sticks", which compared with the 180,000 proclaimed a year ago gives a 90% drop in support for the "mandate of the people". As I often say to friends who call me worried from outside Catalonia every time they see the televised apocalypse of torches and lanterns: think that to the left and right of that street where hysteria is unleashed and angry nationalists spit and push journalists, there are other streets where absolutely nothing is happening. The city is calm. TV cameras simply find the street in conflict much more interesting.

And the beautiful choreography of LEDs, colorful flares and spectacular torches has three interesting readings.

1- As much as it disguises itself of democracy, Catalan nationalism continues to resort to the techniques and symbols that worked so much during Nazism.

2- That myriad of long-lasting torches are not cheap and surely the protesters were not brought them from home. The money for all this comes from the nationalist entities subsidized with the taxes of all Catalans.

3- If we stripped all those scenes of its colorful pyrotechnics, the spectacular photo would be greatly reduced. It's people. A lot. But much, much less than ever.

The tweets of nationalism in social networks no longer hide their nervousness. "We are so few!" They said yesterday when they were going to harass the forces of law in Girona. About so few (twenty in this case) were those gathered by the CUP this past weekend to "throw the army" out of the Bruc barracks in Barcelona. However, around 200 people from Barcelona responded with Spanish flags putting themselves between the few summoned and the barracks, looking at them like saying "And just for this have we come?". Many less than expected, as in this last September 11, of which nationalism still wonders why the low influx. They were more violent, less smiling, but above all, they were less.

Could it be that people are tired of being angry for seven years? Is it because politicians say one thing in their rallies and another in court? Is it because they have no roadmap for a long time? Or perhaps because of their "tight ranks" with those accused of terrorism and the "selfies" of their leaders with those "democrats" of chloratite bombs?

The fact is that on October 1 the political hell broke out (shouts of "disobedience" from who has taken off the nationalist symbols upon receiving the order, proclamation of a "parliament bis" by who shouts "not a step back" from Waterloo, the declaration of "no submission to the sovereignty of Spain" of the people of Amer, affirming however that he would not commit "any administrative fault" just in case..), but the street did not accompany them. Many nationalists have "disconnected" from their leaders.

It's a "hot fall", yes, but it seems to cool.