Catalonia. Campaign ends today with uncertainty about the future government

AThe latest polls were from last Monday – Spanish law does not allow such studies in the five days before the elections – and they all gave a clear victory to the Socialist Party, but without an absolute majority.

To reach the Government, the socialist candidate, Salvador Illa, needs to negotiate with other parties, including independentists who in Madrid have supported the government of socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, but in Catalonia they have been in alliance for 14 consecutive years to always guarantee nationalist executives and separatists.

However, polls said on Monday that this year there is no guarantee of an absolute independence majority in the Catalan parliament, casting doubt on the possibility of a new separatist ‘contraption’ and even more uncertainty regarding the post-electoral scenario.

In second place in the polls was Together for Catalonia (JxCat), led by former autonomous president Carles Puigdemont, who has lived in Belgium since 2017 to escape Spanish justice after making a unilateral declaration of independence.

Waiting for an amnesty law that he negotiated with the socialists to be definitively approved and come into force, Puigdemont, who campaigned from the south of France, intends to return to Catalonia soon and is, initially, the candidate with the most possibilities of leading a new independent regional government.

Both Carles Puigdemont and Salvador Illa, Spain’s Health Minister in the first year of the pandemic, have gained ground in recent weeks, according to the evolution of polls, to the detriment of the current regional president, Pere Aragonès, of the also independent Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC ), which appeared in the most recent studies in third place after having started the campaign competing for second with JxCat.

Illa admitted during the campaign an agreement with the ERC, but said he only refuses to speak with the extreme right; Puigdemont appealed to independentist unity and guaranteed that he would never make a socialist president of the Generalitat; Aragonès did not commit to or reject any scenario, including that of no alliances with any party, which would open the door to a political blockade and a repeat of the elections in the autumn.

The scenarios are even more uncertain because of the almost 40% of undecided people who appeared in one of the polls.

The outcome of the elections in Catalonia on May 12th could have a direct impact on political stability in Spain, as the national government depends on the parliamentary support of the two largest independence parties in the region.

The ERC has already said that the results and possible post-election agreements do not call into question the commitments made in Madrid. Puigdemont has already threatened to withdraw support for Sánchez if the socialists accept the votes of the Popular Party (PP, Spanish right) to make a regional executive led by independentists unfeasible, as happened last year in the Barcelona city council.

At the head of the Government of Spain since 2018, Pedro Sánchez’s Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) granted pardons to separatists convicted of the 2017 attempt at self-determination, changed the penal code to end the crime of sedition that others were accused of (such as Puigdemont ) and has now come forward with an amnesty.

These measures were negotiated with the ERC – which has made all of Sánchez’s governments viable since 2018 – and, in the case of amnesty, also with JxCat, on which it also began to depend, last year, to remain in power.

These agreements now appear to be capitalized electorally by the socialists and Puigdemont, but not by the ERC. But although predictably a loser, it could be precisely the ERC that holds the key to power in Catalonia on Sunday.

Read Also: Two far-right parties may have deputies in Catalonia

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