The musical thread of Catalonia has been progressive during the process and has given the impression that the country is further to the left than it really is.
In order to try to exceed 50% of the votes, which it only achieved in the 2021 elections, in the midst of an epidemic and in the midst of a large abstention, independence had to constantly empathize with the scale of values ??of the left, culturally dominant in Catalonia since the seventies.
It would be interesting to draw a map of Europe with the regions that have maintained the same political inclination for decades. Bavaria, eternally conservative, would stand out on this map. In Italy we would see Emilia-Romagna, still painted red, despite the Northern League. The Portuguese Alentejo was a communist fiefdom until the followers of Álvaro Cunhal began to age. Galicia is very much for the Popular Party, as was just proven a few months ago. Andalusia was loyal to the PSOE for forty years. Catalonia has had two dominant rails for a century: nationalism and the left. It’s not yesterday. Pasqual Maragall did not invent it. In 1923 the Socialist Union of Catalonia was founded. In 1931, Republican Left. In 1936, the PSUC. In 1945, the MSC. And in 1966 the National Workers’ Commission of Catalonia was created.
The musical thread of Catalonia is progressive, but the country is not as left-wing as it might seem. Having failed the process, the musical thread is changing.
In a recent article in La Vanguardia, Josep Martí Blanch pointed out that the possible entry of the Catalan Alliance into Parliament could have an equivalent effect, in the opposite ideological direction, to the incisive irruption of the CUP in 2012.
In reality, the axis has already moved. The PSC offers itself, resoundingly, as the party of order, and Salvador Illa sometimes speaks as a Christian Democrat in the time of Pau VI. Carles Puigdemont has put on his seat belt and has a range of supporters ranging from the rapper Valtònyc to the former hotelier and ex-president of Futbol Club Barcelona, ??man of Aliança Popular in the 1980s. It’s a very, very converging bar opening. Jordi Pujol’s compass in 1980 went from Heribert Barrera to the employer’s office of Alfredo Molinas, with Manuel Milián Mestre in the engine room.
Puigdemont began the campaign by being very ambiguous regarding the possibility of establishing post-electoral pacts with Aliança Catalana, herald of the extreme Catalan national right, a group that could become necessary to maintain a parliamentary majority with the title of independentist Together, yesterday he signed a pact with PSC, ERC, CUP and Commons Sumar by which he undertakes not to agree with the extreme right. The man in the seat belt seems to have changed tactics and is now betting everything on the competition with ERC. We’ll see how long this pact lasts.
A significant result for the two far-right parties, the Spanish and the Catalan, could be one of the relevant notes of May 12. Some polls also indicate that Vox could continue to outperform the Popular Party. It would be terrible news for Alberto Núñez Feijóo.
The musical thread is changing in Catalonia, a society that, for better or for worse, has always tuned in to European shortwave broadcasts. Here, Radio Budapest.
