The title of this article is not intended to parody any joke, but considering the electoral campaign, the question arises: how are the PP, Junts and ERC similar these days? Very easy. For different reasons, the three are convinced that Salvador Illa is a puppet at the service of Pedro Sánchez. This is how they express it these days in the electoral rallies and debates, while the PSC candidate is seen with a suffering Sánchez who seeks personal and political redemption for Catalan lands.
It is curious that the PP attributes to Illa a dependence on the Moncloa when no Catalan popular candidate has ever been autonomous with respect to the leadership of Genoa. But it is an accusation consistent with his strategy of including the socialists on the side of the independence movement. The thing about ERC and Junts requires a little more explanation.
Both Pere Aragonès and Carles Puigdemont, even more crudely, insist that Illa is subject to the interests of Moncloa. In both cases it is emphasized that the PSC in the presidency of the Generalitat would be ineffective in defending the interests of Catalonia against the central government. The speech was already practiced with great success by Jordi Pujol. But now Junts has introduced into the debate that Illa has to sacrifice the possibility of being president at the altar of Moncloa. That is, give way to Puigdemont so that he does not let Sánchez fall.
The fact is that this issue is not new either. It was 2006 and the president was José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. He had been elected two years earlier with the abstention of CiU and the favorable vote of ERC and IU. The Catalan elections were approaching and Artur Mas, then in the opposition, maintained a fluid relationship with Zapatero, with whom months before he had closed an agreement on the Statute. In one of his private conversations. Mas hinted to the leader of the PSOE that, if he won the Catalan elections again, Zapatero should speak with José Montilla to prevent the PSC from re-editing a tripartite party and taking away the presidency of the Generalitat.
That compromise would not have gone badly for Zapatero. Let us remember that he was in the minority. Perhaps not as precarious as Sánchez’s current one, since he could have tried it with ERC and IU. But at that time these alliances would have been very difficult for the PSOE to explain in the rest of Spain. More than Sánchez the pact with Podemos or Esquerra. On the other hand, the support of CiU was most convenient. So Zapatero did not turn a deaf ear to the offer, but he responded to Mas that, in any case, he would have to talk about it with Montilla. So it was. The meeting lasted very little. And the result was that the tripartite was repeated.
Did that have consequences for Zapatero? The leader of the PSOE remained in power for just over a year and after new elections he was sworn in as president again in April 2008, again with the abstention of CiU (ERC voted no). Later it would be the economic crisis that would take down that government. This does not mean that history has to repeat itself exactly the same. Sánchez’s circumstances are not those of Zapatero. But above all Puigdemont is not Mas.
For Illa to become president of the Generalitat, she does not need Sánchez’s permission so much, as Feijóo states in the interview published today by La Vanguardia, but rather two conditions apart from winning the elections: the first, that there is no viable pro-independence majority, and the second, that ERC is willing to negotiate some type of alliance with him.
The pro-independence majority may be feasible in numbers, although it is complicated by the poor relations between ERC, Junts and the CUP. Whenever Puigdemont urges independence unity, in ERC they reply privately that he only wants it when he leads it. Instead, he chose to leave the Government. Even so, if there is a majority of this nature, the two parties would be forced to explore it and negotiate an independence roadmap that would also complicate things for Sánchez.
If for the first time in more than a decade there is no viable pro-independence majority and, as most polls indicate, Illa were to win the elections, the socialist would need support to be inaugurated. Puigdemont is not going to give it to him, although the PSC leader has tried in recent years to get closer to Junts, trusting that, little by little, his convergent soul would reemerge. This has not been the case and, as long as Puigdemont holds the leadership, this approach is unsuccessful. ERC has not closed the door completely on Illa, but his attitude will depend on the result of his fight with Junts. If they come out of that duel successfully it will be easier than if they are badly beaten.
The Catalan legislature began with a coalition government between ERC and Junts, supported in the Parliament by the CUP. Thus it started with a pro-independence majority. But the Republicans remained in the Generalitat thanks to the budgets approved with the PSC and the commons, that is, a left-wing agreement. The predominant axis has changed in three years. 12-M will set a new course that will also have effects on Spanish politics. Everyone agrees on this, from the PP to the independentists and even the PSOE.
