Catalan News: Pro-independence ERC party's win

IT was a historic general election for the pro-independence Esquerra party (ERC), which increased its number of seats to a record 15 in the Spanish parliament.

Winning six more seats than in it did in the last general election in June 2016, it is the first time since the 1930s that ERC has come first among the Catalan parties.

With the Junts per Catalunya party (JxCat) coming in with seven seats (one less than the last election), it means the pro-independence bloc in the Congress has an unprecedented 22 seats.

This could be significant, as Pedro Sánchez's Socialists, who won the election with 123 seats, may need the support of the pro-independence bloc to form a government.

Next among the parties in Catalonia came the Catalan Socialists (PSC), who went up five seats to 12, although the leftwing En Comú Podem party (ECP) was unable to maintain its good showing from three years ago, dropping from 12 seats to seven.

The unionist Ciutadans party (Cs) held on to its five seats, while the also unionist People's Party (PPC) lost five seats, dropping to just one.

It was also an historic night for the far-right Vox party, which entered parliament for the first time with one seat in Catalonia, and a further 23 in the Spanish wing of the party.

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Broken Politics on the Iberian Penisular

 by Brian Bamford

BROKEN-up politics has characterised Spain since the successful rise of Podemos and the Citizen's Ciudadanos party in the 2015 election.  After that the two-party system was over.  Now with the far right VOX party gaining 24 seats in yesterday's elections there is a real fragmentation in political life which mirrors events elsewhere in Europe.

This election came less than a year after Spain’s then prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, was defeated in a vote of no confidence owing to corruption in his Popular Party.  The leader of the socialist party (PSOE), Pedro Sanchez, then formed a minority government with the help of the Catalan separatists, leading his critics to accuse him of being too friendly with the independentistas.  

  

However, Sanchez was unable to hold this informal coalition together and last February he called a snap general election when he was unable to get a national budget through the Cortes parliament when the Catalan nationalists witheld their support owing to the problems over Catalan independence.

The issues of independence, identity and Spanish unity flavoured the election.  And yet, the most significant consequence of these elections was the fragmentation of the right and the centre right.  The most damaged party in these elections has been the conservative Popular Party, which has lost votes to both the far Right VOX and the more centrist Ciudadanos Citizen's party.

  Catalan Independence

The Catalan independence conflict originally came to a crisis in October 2017 when the Catalan separatists held an unconstitutional independence referendum, which drew 40% of eligible voters but saw a 90% vote to secede.  Three weeks later, Carles Puigdemont, the region’s president at the time, declared independence — leading to Spain’s deepest constitutional crisis since its return to democracy.

As a result, the Spanish government, then led by the Popular Party, fired the Catalan parliament, wrested control of the region, began arresting the movement’s leaders and called for fresh regional elections.

While separatists criticized the government for cracking down, some on the right argued the Popular Party was too soft on the independentistas.

Fragmentation of the Right

Consequently some Popular Party voters turned to VOX, which seeks to suppress regional autonomy in Catalonia.  A xenophobic party VOX echoes Franco’s nationalist rhetoric and follows the populist trend seen in recent years across Europe, stoking fear of immigrants and demonizing feminists.

On the other hand some other former Partido Popular voters seem to have drifted towards the centrist Citizen's Ciudadanos party.

The Catalan crisis and the rise of Vox have changed the debate in Spanish politics.
'This is not an election about the economy - a different situation from what we have seen in more than 20 years,' says Juan Rodríguez Teruel, professor of political science at the University of Valencia.

Despite widespread concerns about unemployment - which remains high in Spain compared with its European neighbours - it barely featured during the campaign and was raised during the debates only briefly

But Prof Teruel warns that the surge for Vox is coming at the expense of other right-leaning parties - the PP or Ciudadanos. And for the first time since the 1970s, the right is 'very fragmented' - something that could benefit opponents on the left.

'The main reason now to vote for the left-wing electorate is to avoid the potential coalition among right-wing parties,' Prof Teruel says. 
 
Ciudadanos, meanwhile, could feasibly support a coalition with the Socialists, despite publicly dismissing the idea.

'I'm not sure they could keep this position if the numbers give the potential of a coalition,' Prof Teruel says.

'The pressure on Ciudadanos will be very, very high.'

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'Anarchy' = Absence of government in Spain?

THE word 'anarchy' in its dictionary definition is often defined as 'an absence of government'.  Though pedantic thinkers, including anarchists, will often rely on narrow dictionary definitions of the meaning of words, modern philosophers like Ludwig Wittgenstein have discredited this approach to the pursuit of meaning.  Those of us come from a Wittgensteinian or ethnomethodological tradition consider the meaning of a word to be in its use.
Ironically the reality of the present situation in Spain is that for the first time since January 1492, when Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon – the Catholic monarchs – occupied Granada completing their conquest of Moorish Spain, Spain has always had a government.  Even at the time of the Spanish Civil War in 1936-37 when the Spanish anarchists were at their strongest, their was a government in Spain (actual there were two if we count the Nationalist one and even the anarchists ultimately accepted the invite to join the governments in Madrid and Barcelona).
And yet, since December 20^th, last year., when the elections failed to give any party a necessary majority to form a government and attempts to form a coalition failed, Spain has had no effective government.   Under the Spanish system a Spaniard votes for 'diputados' (MPs) who elect the prime minister.  Then with a parliamentary majority, the winning party proclaims its leader, but without a majority, the parties need to negotiate.  This means a voter may end up supporting positions he/ or she would not normally support.  Today voting for the Socialist Party may mean a leftist coalition if the Socialists join with the Podemos Party, or a vote for the centre-right may involve voting for the conservative Popular Party (PP) and then get an alliance of the PP and the Ciudadnos Party.  It offers a blank cheque to the parliamentary parties, but even then the Spanish parties have not been able to get any agreement.  
Because of this failure to get agreement a second election had to be called on June 26^th, which ended in a very similar result to the one last December.  For more than 250 days Spain has been unable to elect a government. 
As things stand a 'caretaker' government is in place: the Partido Popular.  But it can't appoint new ministers, and from its original 13-member cabinet, only 10 are left.  The caretaker government has no authority to approve next year's budget, a basic tool of government and which should be in place by October; as you read this experts in constitutional law are pouring over the legal texts to search for a line that suggests authority in the current situation.  It has been nine months since the government enacted any laws:  its members are too busy campaigning and negotiating. 
Martin Caparrós, a journalist on the New York Times writes:
'These days, the “meanwhile” government manages everyday matters, and not very well.  In a situation that lacks legal status, no one wants to be in charge of important decisions, affairs are delayed and decisions never made...'
The life of ordinary people continues much as always, and Seňor Caparrós continues:
'In everyday life, a country without a government looks dangerously similar to one with one. ...  There are those who wonder if governments are so necessary and seem uninterested in any attempt to form one.'
This week, Mariano Rajoy of the PP will try to be reinstated as qa fully functioning prime minister.  But his option are limited.  If he fails, his party will probably call for new elections to be held on the 25^th, December.  If so that should give a boost to any latent anarchism in Spain, because Seňor Ranjoy and his party will be hoping the by calling an election during Navidad will benefit the right with a low turnout, but it will merely deliver a death blow to any vain expectations in elections whatever the outcome.  Especially since the Spaniards have a long history of distrust of governments.

Squaring the Spanish Circle

SPANISH politics is in a state of shock following the latest elections which some now ask if this 'is the dawn of a new era?'    Following the result of the regional elections earlier this year it was not unexpected that the ruling conservative Popular Party (PP), which won a landslide victory four years ago, would suffer.  In the event it has now lost more than three million votes, leaving the PP of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy with the most votes at 29% of the total turn out, and 123 of the 350 seats in the Spanish Parliament, but well less than an overall majority.  

The alternating big two-party system of the PP and the Socialist Party (PSOE) which has dominated Spanish politics since the death of Franco in 1975, could now be on its last legs.   

The main reason for this political 'ruptura' being the rise of the Podemos meaning 'We can' led by 37-year-old Pablo Iglesias, which got 20% of the vote just behind PSOE.  Podemos was founded as a far-left party by a group of university professors, and it went on to accuse not just a particular Government but what it called 'the regime of 1978' (the year of the Spanish Constitution). 

In a way the socialist PSOE suffered more tellingly than the conservative PP, for while the PP was hit after having implemented years of unpopular austerity policies, after years in opposition the socialist PSOE lost more than a million votes in the election, mostly no doubt to Podemos.   

Given the history of Spain with its roots in the Civil War and anarchism it is probably not surprising that what some are calling the 'new politics' is being pioneered in Spain and southern Europe.  With over 20% unemployment and the young hit hardest, it is surprising that the established parties didn't get a worse result given their involvement in cases of widespread corruption, cronyism, scandals and political incompetence. 

Yet, the old parties, both the PP and the PSOE, seem determined to hold out against the shock of the new.  The Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy in the run up to the elections refused to share a platform on TV with the new parties of Podemos and the Ciudadanos (Citizens), a kind of centre-right Podemos.  And, last Saturday in El Pais, the socialist general secretary of PSOE, Pedro Sánchez  was adamant that his party would not  unite 'the PSOE with a pact of the Left that respete the integrity of the Spanish territory' and if Podemos wanted a referendum for Catalan independence, a pact with them would not be possible:

'If Podemos insists on its condition of celebrating a referendum in Catalonia, an accord will not be possible.' 

The socialist PSOE won 90 seats against the 123 seats that went to the conservative PP, but Podemos got 69.and the centrist new party Ciudadanos had 40 seats.   

The Spanish economy is the forth-largest in the eurozone, yet it is hard to see how with a election result like this that it will be possible for any possible coalition of the parties to hold the fort without another election that can give a clearer result.  For the Spanish socialists their share of the vote has crashed by half from 44% to 22% in only two elections.  Yet this would still be enough to make them the King-makers but the two alternative choices for coalition with the PSOE are toxic:    the PSOE has made it clear it would not support the re-election of Mariano Rajoy, the prime minister and PP leader which would split the leftist elements of the party who would then turn to Podemos; and Pedro Sanzchez has said that he would not go into alliance with Podemos so long as it remains committed to an independence referendum in Catalonia, the north eastern Spanish region, historically anarcho-syndicalist, that has long been the centre of  secessionist aims.