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On Friday, the centre-right Independence Party Junts broke its alliance with the centre-left ERC (Esquerra republicana), leaving it alone in government. The decision came after an internal vote in which 55 percent of Junts members decided to stop supporting the government, accusing ERC allies and regional president Pere Aragonès, a member of the party, of being too docile to the government be on the subject of autonomy or independence of the region.
The removal of junts from government marks a clear rift between the right and the pro-independence left, which have long dominated local government and who together helped promote pro-independence demands in Catalonia for about a decade, culminating in the illegal referendum. of 2017. The ERC is now expected to continue to govern alone with a minority government, but it is not out of the question that for the first time in many years it will also seek the support of non-independence parties.
There has long been a major split in the Catalan independence movement between moderates, like Aragonès, who want to agree a legal referendum on independence with the Spanish government, and extremists who instead seek direct confrontation and unilateral action to secure secession. , like most Junts exponents. At the end of September, after particularly tense days, Aragonès sacked his deputy Jordi Puigneró from Junts, who accused him of not doing enough for the independence cause. In response, the party announced an internal confrontation to discuss whether to continue supporting the government.
The Junts current, which voted to leave the government, was notably closest to party leader Laura Borràs, a staunch pro-independence activist: According to Borràs, the Aragonès government now has “no democratic legitimacy” and it would do so to the regional parliament to decide whether he can continue to rule. For its part, Aragonès announced on Saturday that it would work to build new alliances and seek “the path of broad consensus” to “guarantee the stability of the institutions”. He made no reference to the issue of independence in his announcement.
For now, Aragonès is expected to formally appoint on Monday the seven new directors who will replace Junts, including three independents: Gemma Ubasart, university professor and former secretary of Podemos in Catalonia, who will be appointed head of the Ministry of Justice; Quim Nadal, former mayor of Girona and former leader of the Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSC) in the Catalan Parliament, as Councilor for Universities; and to the Department of Social Rights Carles Campuzano, former MP of Convergència i Unió, former coalition of the Center.
In the Catalan Generalidad, i.e. the government of the region, the ERC currently only has 33 of 135 seats, even though it is the largest delegation. For this reason, it is possible that, depending on future alliances, Catalonia may be governed by forces that are not independent for the first time in a very long time. According to El País, both the PSC, the local version of the Socialist Party, and En Comú Podem, a progressively oriented coalition dependent on Unidas Podemos, have declared their willingness to form alliances.
– Also read: Independence in Catalonia five years after the referendum
Five years ago, on October 1, 2017, Catalonia hosted the controversial and illegal referendum for independence from Spain, which to this day remains one of the most relevant and controversial issues not only in Catalonia but in the whole country. In the years following the referendum, however, the number of pro-independence Catalans steadily declined and the pro-independence movement fragmented, causing the secessionists’ political initiative to lose at least some of its momentum.
This does not mean that the demands for independence are over: in fact, they are still very strong throughout Catalonia. However, the political context that led to the illegal referendum and unilateral declaration of independence in 2017 is now very distant and the political forces currently in power, both in Spain and Catalonia, are striving to establish a dialogue on the issue to guide the autonomy of the region.
For more than a year, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and Aragonès have started organizing regular meetings between a Spanish and a Catalan delegation. Sánchez does not want to grant independence to Catalonia, but only to negotiate further levels of autonomy; Aragonès, on the other hand, remains a convinced independent who, however, does not want to organize an illegal secession referendum coordinated with the government.
During this period, the Catalan government’s allies had clashed precisely on the issue of relations with Spain, with junts who had backed the unilateral initiatives and claimed to be the only Catalan party truly focused on gaining independence.