A sign of exhaustion or disinterest, after a decade of passion and drama? Catalans abstained in large numbers on Sunday, during the election to the Autonomous Parliament of Barcelona.
If we except the 2021 consultation, in the midst of a pandemic, and the aborted referendum of October 2017, unrecognized and boycotted en masse by pro-Madrid voters, participation — between 50% and 55% — is by far the lowest for a very long time in Catalonia.
In the 2010s, marked by an incredible rise in independence — from 15% to 50% almost overnight — while an arrogant right reigned in Madrid and violently refused any right to self-determination for the Catalans, we were going to vote at 70% and even 80%.
Through the votes for parties clearly identified with one or the other option, the existential question was posed: in Spain or outside Spain? People flocked to answer them. With results, repeated between 2015 and 2021, which roughly gave: 50-50. But Madrid has never let the Catalans express themselves through a legal and decision-making referendum.
During these years of revolt against a central government deaf to the demand for self-determination, the annual “Diada” demonstrations, on September 11, were the most massive in the world, anywhere combined, with crowds regularly exceeding a million people. .
Even the serious repressive episode of 1er October 2017, the police intervention against the unilateral referendum in Barcelona, followed by the arrest or exile of numerous independence leaders, had not weakened support for independence, in the elections of December 2017 and from February 2021.
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But in 2024, the backlash is finally visible. The collapse in participation doesn’t lie. As for the ranking of the parties themselves, it also betrays the fatigue of the independence movement.
This year there were four pro-independence groups. The venerable Republican Left (ERC) plummeted, going from 33 to 20 seats (out of 135). The Junts party, led by exiled leader Carles Puigdemont (who campaigned from the south of France – despite the famous amnesty passed, the arrest warrants are still in force), won four seats.
The far left pro-independence CUP goes from 9 to 4 deputies. And a newcomer, the Catalan Alliance, categorized as “hard right”, takes two seats. The independence bloc, which had the majority of seats until 2021, but which has since fractured – Junts and ERC, allies for years, are now in latent war – only obtains 62 deputies. And above all, the added votes of the four parties do not reach 43% of the total — compared to 48% or 49% during the entire previous decade.
With 28% and 41 seats, the winner is the Catalan Socialist Party (PSC), a direct emanation of the PSOE in power in Madrid. Its leader, Salvador Illa, pleads for overcoming the “identity divide” and the formation of regional alliances on bases other than the Catalan national question.
This election of May 12, 2024, heartbreaking for the separatists, shows that among at least 57% of voters, there is the desire to vote on other questions, in a regional and non-sovereign framework… and in a peaceful relationship with Madrid.
Even the most resolutely pro-independence major group, the Junts de Puigdemont party, seemed to take this development into account. In Barcelona, he put up a number of posters reading: “A good government”… which recalls René Lévesque’s slogan in 1976. Implied: a good regional government.
Will the PSC, clearly in the lead, find allies? Difficult to imagine with the right-wing parties, PP and Vox, rabid anti-Catalanists. Another possibility – already seen in the past – is a government alliance with “patient” separatists, those of the Republican Left, who know that the Big Evening is not for tomorrow.
Even then, a majority will be difficult to find. After these trying years of passion which did not come to fruition, the Catalans are tired and disoriented.
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