The play of May 28 is repeated. The PSC is the clear winner of the general elections in Catalonia while the independence movement once again falls back, particularly the Republican Left.
If in May the formation led by Oriol Junqueras left 300,000 votes on the way, in these elections it has lost, compared to the 2019 elections, more than four hundred thousand votes.
Gabriel Rufián’s nightmare has come true: the commoners, Catalan allies of the Sumar project, led by Yolanda Díaz, outvoted him and relegated him to being the third electoral force. The only consolation for him is that Esquerra Republicana continues to lead the pro-independence forces, above Junts per Catalunya, which remains as the fourth force in these elections. Rufián’s candidacy would have surpassed that of Míriam Nogueras by some 69,000 votes.
However, despite the fact that the result of the independence movement is not good, the truth is that the two political groups acquire decisive weight from tonight. The 14 deputies that add up to Esquerra Republicana and Junts per Catalunya – the CUP has crashed in these elections – are key to propping up the majority that Pedro Sánchez needs to be invested. They will be a fundamental piece of the complex political equation. Without them, the alternative is a precarious government of PP, Vox, together with allies that are now unlikely… or the blockade. Last night, Rufián warned that “going to new elections would be a failure.”
In view of the results obtained, and given the evidence that the concertation policy with the Government of Spain has caused a severe demobilization of its electorate – the high abstention rate in Catalonia has particularly affected the pro-independence groups – it is clear that the decision regarding the future government of Spain will not be easy or comfortable. A period of anxiety began within the independence movement.
In the key position in which Junts and ERC find themselves, the price to be charged for supporting Sánchez may be very high, but the cost of not favoring the progressive majority would also be very high. The summer will be spent in that dilemma.
Last night, the leader of Junts, Miriam Nogueras said that “we will not make Pedro Sánchez president for nothing. We are not going to move an inch.”
Meanwhile, the PSC, with 19 deputies and more than 1.1 million votes, has become the fundamental ally to achieve what almost no survey expected, that Pedro Sánchez would manage to improve the results of 2019 with two more deputies, 122 out of 120 in 2019.
The socialist party has won in five communities, the Basque Country, Extremadura, Navarra, the Canary Islands and Catalonia, but only in the latter has it registered a substantial increase in deputies. In 2019 the PSC obtained 12 seats, this time incorporating seven more representatives. No other community has registered a comparable increase. The Catalan socialists prevailed in the four Catalan provinces and in more than 400 municipalities. Its result is the third best in its electoral history after the absolute majority of 1982 and the general elections of 2008.
Sumar’s project also obtained a good result yesterday with 491,000 votes, some 30,000 more than Esquerra Republicana, the third force.
With a total of seven deputies, the list headed by Aïna Vidal in Catalonia thus contributes a sixth of all the votes obtained by the project led by Yolanda Díaz throughout Spain.
However, the result of the candidacy of the commons is still far from the elections of 2015 and 2016 when they were located in Catalonia with close to a million votes and became the first force. The explicit absence of Podemos has claimed its part in these general elections.
On the contrary, the PP in Catalonia has been below the expectations set by the polls. However, Núñez Feijóo’s speech has managed to make its way among the Catalan electorate and has almost doubled the result of 2019. It has gone from two to six deputies and obtained more than 13% of the votes. In 2019 he stayed in just over 7% of the votes.
His tacit ally, Vox, has obtained a much more mediocre result and is left with the two deputies he already had. In Catalonia, the bloc on the right does not reach 20% of the votes.
