Opinion

Why the pro-independence movement is widening its lead in Catalonia

photo_camera Elecciones en Cataluña con una alta abstención

    The elections in Catalonia will once again surprise Europeans and analysts around the world. After ten years of independence process, with an illegal referendum and a conviction for sedition as milestones, citizens continue to give a comfortable majority to the political parties that have ruined this Spanish region from the moral point of view, but above all from the economic point of view and the future of its next generations. The media, which have had such a hard time correcting their impression that there is no repression against ideas in Spain but rather persecution of crimes committed, are once again witnessing the victory and presumptuousness of political formations which in countries of our closest environment would be begging for legalization for defending the destruction of the country in which they compete in the electoral processes. They see how constitutionalism and unionism do not convince the majority of those who vote, because staying at home while independentism mobilizes to achieve a new triumph cannot be considered an excuse. 
    The rejoicing of Junqueras and Puigdemont is today the same as that of Putin, who has contributed so much from his government to destabilize Spanish democracy by spreading false news in the most exacerbated moments of anti-Spanish nationalism. The news, however, is disastrous for the EU, which sees election after election how an outdated phenomenon almost a century ago revives in small territories to threaten the institutional normality of a European project of freedom and progress in which separatism should be banished. 
Sunday's regional elections in Spain also show that the neglect of responsibilities in politics is paid for, especially when the delicate situation makes it advisable to take the initiative and occupy spaces that would otherwise be occupied by your adversaries. The candidacy of Ciudadanos has lost thirty seats in the regional Parliament and has gone from being the first force to the second to last, because its legs trembled when it was most necessary to show determination, in contrast to what the winner has just announced, that he will go to the investiture, even if he loses it. The responsibility of the new leader of this party is today the same as that shown by her predecessor when she made the decision to abandon a project that she had led to the most absolute disaster. As in that St. Valentine's Day massacre, her defeat is extensible to that of the Popular Party, an acronym completely disconnected from the Catalan reality, run over by the new Vox party with which the leader of the PP broke ties less than three months ago. The infantile and recalcitrant fracture of the Spanish right promises many years of left-wing governments, moderate and extreme.
    The winners at the polls may not govern. With the same votes obtained by the now Minister Iceta in 2017, the Socialist Party has gone from 17 to 33 seats, to win the elections in popular vote and dispute the victory in seats to the first pro-independence force. The strategy of having the aspirant to the Catalan government comfortably betting on the popularity that comes with being the highest health authority in a deadly and sweeping pandemic has proved successful in partisan terms. Sánchez has triumphed in the first instance in these elections, but his very short victory can be really measured when the government is formed: if the candidate Illa is not president and ERC prefers, as it seems, to feed the rupturist bloc, this victory will be bitter and could also lead to instability for the central government.