In Barcelona, on the corner of Urgell Street and Avenida de Roma, the so-called Enriqueta Gallinat Group has been meeting every night for eight years. Whatever the weather, whether work or vacation, a group of neighbors, few, often no … They arrive at six people and bring out flags and banners to demand independence. With more time than careers, their persistence is as great as the nonchalance that accompanies them to a city where the effervescence of “the process” is almost a memory. Not for the group mentioned above, and is an almost caricature example of how only the insistence of certain groups of the elderly maintains the same Dip packing “indepe”. “Granny luck,” shouts the president of the Catalan National Assembly (ANC) when he points out the contrast between the peak years of the independence movement, when, for example, institutes were suffering from over-mobilization, and the current “depression.”
Feelings of independence
and relations with Spain
Do you want to become Catalonia?
In an independent country?
In % of the number of responses
Regarding the relationships between
Catalonia and Spain, what do you think?
What should that relationship be?
He believes that Catalonia should be…
In % of the number of responses
Autonomous community in Spain
A state within Federal Spain
Feelings of independence and relations with Spain
Do you want Catalonia to become an independent country?
As a percentage of the number of responses
Regarding relations between Catalonia and Spain, how do you think they should be?
That relationship? He believes that Catalonia should be…
As a percentage of the number of responses
Autonomous community in Spain
A state within Federal Spain
The perception that young people are on a different wavelength has been confirmed in demonstrations such as the one on Orgill Street, but above all in statements such as the one I made. Center for Opinion Studiesthe Catalan CIS, which confirmed in the last part of its scale that support for independence among young people is still at its lowest levels, in contrast to the same poll conducted ten years ago, not to mention the poll conducted in October 2017, at the height of the rupture process.
When faced with the binary question: “Do you want Catalonia to become an independent state?” only 32.6% of young people between the ages of 18 and 24 answered yes, compared to 58.2% who answered negatively. There is a difference of 25 points At a great distance than the overall average (39.4% in favor of a break, 52.7% against it), and even further than other age groups, especially from 50 to 64 years, who are most torn.
The data is more eloquent compared to previous years. Inside it Statistical seriesThe fall 2015 poll showed that youth support for the independence movement reached 48.1% versus 44.3%, which is largely on par with other groups, at the time of the rising phase of mobilization. This will reach its peak in the fall of 2017, coinciding with the October 1 referendum, where 52.1% of younger people supported secession, compared to 44.4% who opposed it. That is, from 2017 to 2025, independence among young people fell by 20 points, a much more pronounced decline than in the overall population, where support for secession from Spain fell from 48.7 to 39.4. The secessionist movement is certainly aging poorly, having gone in a decade from the highs of 2017 to the lows of 2025.
The situation of the young sectors is also very important when they are not facing a Binary questionIt is the equivalent of what might be raised in a hypothetical referendum, but when asked explicitly what the “relationship” between Catalonia and Spain is. Hence, it is the group of 18-24 year olds that most broadly supports (48%) maintaining the current model (the Autonomous Community of Spain), which is added to the 5% that supports the “Region” model and the 9% that advocates “a state within federal Spain”, a percentage that far exceeds the 25% – the lowest of all groups – that calls for an “independent state”.
The CEO’s statements are consistent with other recent studies, specifically those on political values prepared by the official Catalan Youth Agency, which confirm that Sense of identity The number of young Catalans has decreased by 21 points in the past decade. Thus, in 2014, at the beginning of the “process,” up to 57% of young people aged 18 to 29 identified themselves as only Catalan or more Catalan than Spanish, a percentage that dropped ten years later to 36.2%.
The same study also highlighted A Heel to the right For this segment of the population, especially among men. This study shows a change in that trend as the population of 18-29 year olds becomes more right-leaning than usual. If young people are traditionally rated between 3 and 4 on a scale in which 0 is the far left and 10 is the far right, in the work cited above, young people were placed at 4.3, two tenths above people over 29 years of age.