**6. Conclusions**

The *Diada* is an event that has hitherto received little or no scholarly attention. In this article, we have attempted to remedy this with a combined historical and ethnographic analysis of the development of the *Diada* from its modern inception in 1976 until present day, 2019. We have shown

<sup>44</sup> Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya (PSUC) or Unified Socialist Party of Catalonia was a communist political party active in Catalonia between 1936 and 1997.

<sup>45</sup> Salvador Allende, democratically elected left-wing President of Chile, was killed during Augusto Pinochet's CIA-supported military coup d'état in 1973.

how the connotations, discourses, and values surrounding the event have changed throughout its history. Although the *Diada* perhaps always held a paramount position within the Catalan independence movement, that movement was until recent times a more fringe pursuit. As the movement has grown to a much larger scope, there has been a corresponding change in how the *Diada* is celebrated, organised, and understood by participants. The surge in participation in recent years has largely been orchestrated by civil society actors such as the ANC and Òmnium Cultural, which have taken over the organisation of the *Diada* from the political parties that dominated it between 1980 and 2012. This shift from political parties to civil society has caused significant changes in how the *Diada* is perceived by its participants and by Catalan society at large, as well as in its capacity to mobilise people. E ffectively, the *Diada* has gone from a politically controlled, cultural commemoration of history and the national character of the Catalans to a civil society-controlled, explicitly political mobilisation in favour of Catalan independence. This speaks to Kathryn Crameri's categorisation of the Catalan independence movement as a political co-creation that is both antagonistic and cooperative (Crameri 2015, p. 109), with institutional political actors and civil society associations working together ye<sup>t</sup> competing for control.

Although the future of the *Diada* is di fficult to predict, it is doubtful that the mass mobilisations in recent years can be sustained in perpetuity. The political crisis in the independence movement following the 2017 referendum has made it more di fficult to sustain a positive, mobilising spirit for the *Diada*, and the lack of political gains in regards to further autonomy or indeed in any progress towards independence makes fatigue inevitable among activists. Focusing on demands with popular backing has mobilised and greatly increased participation, but there will have to be a noticeable progress towards the realisation of those demands within a reasonable period if participation is not to su ffer. However, we should not be too quick in proclaiming the *Diada*'s demise as a mobilising event, as the number of participants remain well over half a million, making it one of the largest recurrent demonstrations in Europe. While the *Diada* is primarily organised by civil society, it will perhaps be able to maintain much of its vigour and cross-party mobilising force. However, should political actors such as ERC and PDeCat be successful in taming the event and using it for their own political platform, we may see the *Diada* returning to the smaller-scale, more cultural celebrations of Catalan history of the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s. In any case, the ebbs and flows of the Catalan political-territorial aspirations can be read e ffectively through the *Diada* celebrations, the number of people mobilised, the themes around which they were mobilised, and the ways in which mobilisation worked, which makes it an important site for the contemporary study of Catalan nationalism, the independence movement, and civil society mobilisations.

An additional important aspect of the evolution of the *Diada* celebrations is its increasingly international character, as actors from both civil society and established politics seek to gain access to foreign media through increasing use of English and inviting international guests. In this article we have focused on the *Diada* as shifting between established politics and civil society and on its recent spectacular growth in popularity within Catalonia with over a million attendees. However, of likewise importance is the attempt to attract new international allies outside Catalonia and Spain, an internationalising strategy that is also radically changing the *Diada*, and where further research would be particularly appropriate.

**Author Contributions:** Both co-authors (C.H., M.F.H.) worked on successive drafts of the article together. Both authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

**Funding:** The ethnographic research was funded by Aarhus University with additional fieldwork funding from Augustinus Fonden, Knud Højgaards Fond and Oticon Fonden.

**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare no conflict of interest.
