The joy for the results of 28-M in Junts is inversely proportional to the quotas of power achieved. The final balance, maintain the well-intentioned, is comparable to the situation of CiU in 2003. Outside the Government and settling accounts at the municipal level. But the convergent gene knows that the setting and the protagonists of the desert crossing could not be more different. With CiU in opposition, a lady approached a collaborator of Artur Mas and blurted out: “Nen, tell Mas that when you govern again I will vote for you again.” In the CiU utility in the meantime was the key to the return.
What is the use of voting for Junts? It is the question that many cadres and former senior officials repeat after the fiasco of the City Council and the Barcelona Provincial Council. The pacts with the PSC were encouraged in a sector of Junts as an “internal lever of change”, but it was Xavier Trias himself who ruled it out to be mayor and the “que us bombin” poisoned the possibilities of an agreement in the council.
Pragmatism and coherence are at odds within Junts. At the top, they point out that preserving the spirit of 1-O and the “intelligent confrontation” is a medium-term investment that can bear fruit in the Catalan elections with ERC at its own crossroads. The pragmatists lament the “chronicle of an announced defeat” in the deputies and the institutional residualization of the party. And the borrasistas fish in troubled rivers. In his curriculum, the “incorruptible independence movement” shines unpolluted, but without future development of the path of confrontation.
“A party is coherence, but it is also power and utility,” critics argue. In ERC they endorse the argument. They try to mobilize their electorate and cover up leaks of votes towards the PSC, the commons, Junts, the CUP… Broadening the base also broadens the escape routes… And in front of Junts they present themselves as a party of order and negotiation, willing to assume the contradictions to advance. So many, that they have erased with a stroke of the pen four years of criticism of the PSC-Junts pact in the Barcelona Provincial Council to open “a new era”, “without reproaches”. ERC and PSC govern together in the councils of Lleida and Tarragona and the socialists reach out in Barcelona after the elections.
The handicap on 23-J is making the independence vote useful in the most polarized campaign. Gabriel Rufián and Míriam Nogueras have confirmed that their deputies will not serve for the PP to govern. Then come the nuances. ERC wants to raise the price of its support for a hypothetical investiture of Pedro Sánchez, hand in hand with Bildu, and takes its pragmatism from the dialogue table to the transfer of Rodalies; meanwhile, the Junts roadmap is limited to self-determination and amnesty.
Is the independence sorpasso possible? The polls show that Junts is recovering ground, but there is not a torrent of votes passing from one party to another. Militant abstentionism and disenchantment threaten progress. A bag of 300,000 undecided independentistas is in dispute. And the utility of your vote.