From left to right: the President of the ERC, Oriol Junqueras, the General Coordinator of EH Bildu, Arnaldo Otegi, and the Republican headliner for Barcelona, Gabriel Rufián at the event in Barcelona. Quique Garcia (EFE)
On the election night of March 28, the alarm went off in the Catalan pro-independence parties. The municipal elections confirmed an incessant drop in votes within this bloc, having reached nearly two million votes during the difficult years of the process. Reconnecting with his constituency was the basis for the new elections, and while no one wants to fall into defeatism, there is a certain vertigo in the final leg. Right now, everyone is conspiring to avoid public internal disputes, which Esquerra Republicana and Junts per Catalunya agree are scaring voters away.
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In the May elections, Junts timidly recovered from the crash of 2015, when the neo-converged space had already had its worst election result in history. The CUP left almost 50,000 votes. But it was the Republicans who put a face to the debacle: one in three of their voters did not vote, around 300,000 fewer votes. The call for an electoral advance, as well as the complexity of a mid-summer election, caught the secessionist formations with a changed pace and little room to analyze in depth the reason for the demobilization.
One of the first changes in the ERC’s speech was to add volume to calls for independence unity. It’s a concept that has always been used as a throwing weapon in secessionism, but which, as recognized in these formations, has particular value in election times. Junts, ERC and CUP have different prescriptions about what should be done in the House of Representatives, but they share a diagnosis: the public image of always being on the brink or embroiled in their internal struggles punishes them.
Therefore, beyond the expected logic of electoral confrontation, the more sour tone of other moments was set aside to convey some image of unity. A strategy that managed to survive the debate on the post-election pacts and whose most representative example was the attempt by Junts and ERC to form a coalition government in Barcelona. A step that failed because of the alternative pact between socialists, citizens and the PP, which justified its vote by preventing the independence movement from taking over the mayoralty of the Catalan capital.
On paper, this supposed “state operation” against secessionism, or the threat of Vox having the ability to impose its agenda against Catalan schools, self-government or laminar social advances, underpinned the independentists’ campaign discourse. But clarity in political discourse is one thing and affecting electoral mobilization is another. Although it took days to question the file in Catalan, accepted it in the ranks of the Republicans, it was only before the Municipal Council of PP and Vox in Burriana (Castellón) released publications like Cavall Fort from the municipal library, which are a certain awakening see a vetoed electorate beyond the narrow confines of the party.
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The major pro-independence parties have also had to deal with campaigns promoting abstention as a protest vote. It’s an idea that even came up in defense of the leadership of the Catalan National Assembly (ANC), but was later rejected in a vote by affiliates. Former President Carles Puigdemont himself, who walked into the campaign arena last weekend, made his debut as a supporter of mobilization.
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