The Catalan elections of May 12 offer many interesting data. The clear triumph of candidate Salvador Illa and the PSC, but also of the state strategy of Pedro Sánchez and the Government of progress. The enormous setback of ERC that leaves independence far from the absolute majority. The advance of the nationalist and Spanish right, although there is still a progressive majority in Catalonia. And, also, the important growth in votes of the extreme right, with two offers, one deeply centralist and the other intensely independentist. In addition to the majority support, 80% of the new Parliament, for the amnesty. And, above all, the results of these elections open numerous unknowns about governability due to the number of crossed vetoes and the difficulty of achieving a stable Government. And they also clearly impact state politics.
Catalonia has clear political particularities with respect to the State as a whole. With a very plural Parliament to which eight political forces have acceded (compared to the three with representation in that of Galicia or the six in the case of Euskadi) and an important presence of territorial parties; and the PSC/PSOE as a great state reference, although with Catalan sensitivity.
And, although some try not to recognize it, the results of these May elections confirm that the policy of reconciliation, dialogue, outstretched hand and search for a way out - initially from pardons and now from the amnesty that continues its path in the Courts - to a prolonged conflict has worked. Although there is still a long way to go.
Setback of independence
After twelve years of absolute majority of independence (obtaining 74 seats in the 2012 elections, 72 in those of 2015 and 2017 and 74 in those of 2021), this was broken on 12M. Only 59 seats, 61 if those of Catalan Alliance are included, a xenophobic and extremist formation with which no one says they are willing to agree. Therefore, very far from the 68 that represent the absolute majority.
The setback of the sovereignist bloc - which remains at 43% of support, when it manages to arouse more than 50% - has to do, especially, with the collapse of its left-wing sector, ERC, which loses 13 deputies, and the CUP, which goes from 9 to 4; together they retreat somewhat more than 240,000 votes.
While the right-wing independence represented by Junts and the candidacy of former president Carles Puigdemont increases three seats; and the extreme right - which competes with Vox in anti-migratory discourse and xenophobia - breaks in with two. That space grows globally by about 220,000 votes.
The growth of conservatism also occurs in the state bloc, with the significant increase of the PP in 233,000 votes, largely by absorbing all the previous electoral support of a Cs that went from 158,000 to 22,000 votes and from six to zero seats (0.7%). And, also, the weight of the extreme right increases, with a Vox that rises slightly in votes, from 7.5% to 7.96%, with a total of 248,554 votes. Although the Spanish right and extreme right improve, they represent only 20% of the votes of the community.
PSC, 220,000 more ballots
The PSOE goes from 652,858 to 872,959, that is, it rises by more than 220,000 ballots and reaches 28% compared to 23% in 2021. After its slight rise in the Euskadi elections in April, this result, much more resounding, helps it face the European elections next June. While the Comuns resist; despite the loss of two seats, going from 8 to 6, with 12,800 votes less than in 2021, taking into account, in addition, that Podemos no longer supports Comuns Sumar. In the state bloc, the left also grows compared to the previous autonomous elections and outnumber the right by more than 463,000 votes.
Another element, in this case sufficiently predicted and little or nothing surprising, is the definitive disappearance of Ciudadanos. The formation that won in 2017 with more than one million one hundred thousand votes (25.4%), which went to 157,000 in 2021 and which now has barely exceeded 22,000 ballots, remaining outside the Parliament by reaching only 0.7% of the votes.
We could say that today the Parliament of Catalonia is less independentist than three years ago and, in line with what has been happening in Europe in the most recent stage, also less left-wing than then, although the formations that claim the progressive space are still in the majority in votes and seats.
Amnesty
On the other hand, it should be noted that the repeated discourse of Alberto Núñez Feijoo and the PP accusing Pedro Sánchez of being “a factory of independentists” is a partisan proclamation based on false contents that the data deny: there were many more sovereignists when the PP governed or when the only policies were those of confrontation, the cut of the Estatut or the application of 155.
The so controversial amnesty promoted by Sánchez and the Government of progress - despite the enormous media and political noise of the right - seems to have served to calm the spirits and opened doors to dialogue and negotiation, although it is not conceivable that the solutions will be easy or immediate. And it has benefited electorally the state parties, also the conservatives.
For the moment, the possible new Government will have to wait. At least until after the European elections in June. With mandatory changes in the interlocutors after the crisis opened in ERC and the withdrawal of Aragonés. To propose as Puigdemont does an independentist Government is antagonistic with what the polls said: it does not have enough citizen support. With the results of 12M, the most coherent (and possible in numbers) is a PSC-ERC-Comuns Government, that is, a progressive and transversal Executive. Or an undesirable repetition of elections. One of the historical references of ERC, the former deputy Joan Tardá, has been clear in pointing out that “republicanism should not fall into the temptation of retreating to the winter quarters. It must be decisive in the governance of the largest number of institutions in the country and, mainly, in the Generalitat, in a relationship of collaboration with the forces of the left within the framework of a constructive opposition or other formulas”.
If there is no blockage, the first challenge of the new Executive will be, without a doubt, the thorny issue of financing. A common cake, that of the autonomous financing of the common regime communities, in which any change affects the whole of the nationalities and regions. And in which corrections can be made, but not propose privileges that favor those who have the most nor, either, implement tax cuts to the richest, as the governments of Madrid or the conservative Executive of the Canary Islands have done. The Alternativas Foundation estimates at 5,719 million euros what the autonomous communities stopped collecting in 2022 due to these reductions, of which more than 25% corresponds to Madrid, indicating that these “have focused on the imposition on wealth, especially benefiting citizens with more resources”. In addition, the 2025 budgets may also be conditioned on how the governability of Catalonia is solved.
We are talking about a community with more than 8 million inhabitants and that represents almost 20% of the state GDP. In which very important modifications have occurred in its socio-electoral ecosystem that affect, in different ways, its different political actors. As the journalist Enric Juliana rightly points out, the electoral result of 12M asks for maceration time. A maceration that will not complete its process until well after June 9 and that will open, in all probability, a new stage after elections that also leave their mark on the state political panorama; and in which progressive organizations, whatever their scope, must be up to the circumstances in the face of the advance of conservatism and the ultra-right.
