The present Catalan government coalition has finally and unlamentedly reached the end of its natural course of existence and we have elections on Sunday 28 November. Now that the pope has gone, and been lionised by pretty well all the political leaders whatever their religious views or marital status, we can start the performance. That weekend was already allocated for the Barça – Real Madrid match. That will now be played on Monday 29th.
ENTER STAGE LEFT, THE GOVERNMENT
Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya
The party that represents the people whose names end with -ez or are called García. In other words the people who immigrated from other parts of Spain in the 50s and 60s and whose descendants still largely people the red ring around Barcelona. In the last two parliaments they have led a tripartit (three-party) left wing coalition. Their leader José Montilla was born in Cordoba in Andalusia. That led to a few jibes from CiU about him being a xarnego and not speaking Catalan properly. Possibly as a result of this the party has entered into a kind of Stockholm syndrome and has felt obliged to show that it is as nationalist as anyone else, to the considerable annoyance of PSOE. In Spain the right/left division also represents pro- and anti-nationalist feelings. Catalonia provided the votes that PSOE needed to get Zapatero back into the Moncloa in 2008. Now, and as a result of the tripartit’s record, the PSC is facing a landslide defeat, with unpredictable consequences for the next Spanish election in 2012.
Iniciativa per Catalunya Verds – Esquerra Unida i Alternativa
ICV-EUiA. (Initiative for Catalonia Greens – United and Alternative Left) Ecosocialists. Green Stalinists. The alphabet soup that is its constantly-changing name has digested and assimilated PSUC, the Catalan communist party.
Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya
Catalan Republican Left. Uncompromisingly separatist. If I want nationalism and socialism with my sea and sunshine, I’ll go to Cuba thank you very much. Though I believe that even there nowadays things aren’t what they used to be.
ERC is thoroughly progressive and anti-racist. Except, naturally, when it comes to Bourbon imperialists whose names end with -ez or are called García. Apart from that absolutely anyone is welcome to come and live in Catalonia. Of course you will have to have an official qualification in the Catalan language before you can get any public job from judge to gardener, but that is only a natural and right way of defending the nation’s culture and is nothing at all to do with racism or xenophobia.
ENTER STAGE RIGHT, THE OPPOSITION
Partido Popular
That is popular as in the People’s Party, which is what the Economist calls them. They are the Spanish conservative party. Once they had identifiable liberal, Christian democrat and conservative wings but now they just seem conservative. Except in Cataloonya, where the heirs of Aznar represent the reactionary, jackbooted neo-Francoist forces of Bourbon imperialism. They get a few votes from traitors in Pedralbes.
They have been playing with the issue of immigration and are accused of linking it with crime. They favour tougher controls on immigration.
Convergència i Unió
A curious, permanent, nationalist coalition of Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya and Unió Democràtica de Catalunya. CDC is centre-right, liberal or conservative while UDC is Christian democrat. However, both parties are primarily nationalist and any other political philosophy is a secondary consideration; this was strikingly so under its former leader Jordi Pujol and remains so under its present leader Artur Mas, who has nevertheless moved the party more towards a separatist position but still always dodges the question of whether or not he would actively support independence. Mas is the head of the CiU list in these elections. Why so when he is less popular than UDC leader Josep Antoni Duran i Lleida? A very good question that was put to Mas by a member of the public on a TV programme. He didn’t come up with a very good answer.
CiU represents the old Catalan bourgeoisie and the shopkeepers. They favour ‘Catalonia’ as perceived through the prism of nationalist mythology, and are not averse to the occasional racist comment when it suits.
DEI EX MACHINA
Ciutatans
The name means ‘citizens’. They must have done fairly well in the last four years because this time their leader appears on election posters wearing clothes, which is more than he could afford last time round. They are against nationalism and believe that in a bilingual country people should be able to use whichever official language they prefer, so they will obviously never get anywhere in Cataloonya. They also, most unfortunately, confuse opposition to nationalism with political centralism.
Laporta2010
When Joan Laporta ceased being President of FC Barcelona, he didn’t know what the future held in store so he went to Caprabo and bought himself a chicken. A close scrutiny of its giblets revealed that he was destined to become President of an independent Catalonia. His apotheosis is confidently expected (by him and a few mates) to take place on 28 November.
THE PRESENT PARLAMENT (2006)
CiU 48 (31.5%), PSC* 37 (26.8%), ERC* 21 (14.0%), PP 14 (10.6%), ICV-EUiA* 12 (9.5%). Ciutatans 3 (3.0%)
*PSC, ERC and ICV-EUiA form the government with 70 of the 135 seats.
WHAT WILL HAPPEN?
The polls show a clear increase for CiU and a clear fall for PSC and ERC. Mas is pulling out all the stops to ensure that his voters turn out but apathy is rife. The present government has plumbed unheard-of depths of unpopularity and pretty well fell to pieces before the summer, but the opposition is less than inspiring. The only party that has any chance of winning an overall majority is CiU, and this is what Mas wants. He feels cheated by the last election, which put him well ahead in votes but he was prevented by parliamentary arithmetic from forming a government. If this were to happen, we would have to hope, possibly with some justification, that he would turn out to be quite different in government from the figure he presents in opposition.
But a CiU majority is unlikely. Yesterday’s CIS poll, discounting abstentions (17.5%) and don’t knows (19.1%), shows: CiU 38% (59 seats), PSC 22.7% (33), ERC 10.2 (15-16), PP 9.7% (14-13), Ciutatans 3.5% (3), blank 3.0%.
What are the possible coalition deals?
CiU + PP
Artur Mas has signed a paper, witnessed by a notary no less, saying that he will not do a deal with the PP so this one is obviously a real possibility. Economically and socially they would go together rather like the British Tory/Liberal coalition; Catalan shopkeepers and Spanish business people can get along. But they have more in common than that. Convergència has been plundering the funds of the Palau de la Música in Barcelona and diverting the money into its own coffers, with a hefty commission for its Mr Fixit, while the PP has been plundering anything it can get its paws on in the rest of Spain, especially Valencia and Madrid.
Aside from that there is a very important difference. CiU is Catalan nationalist flirting with separatism while the PP is what in the UK used to be called unionist. This is not an insuperable problem however; they have worked together before in Barcelona and Madrid, and such a deal would pave the way for CiU to support a PP minority government in Madrid in 2012 if – and it’s a big if – Mas and Duran can sell it to their voters. It would mean moving back from their separatist position. They would be kingmakers in Madrid and influencing Spanish policy instead of being stuck only in Barcelona. Pujol understood that and for all his rhetoric (which took whichever course best served his purpose at the time) he never identified himself clearly with the cause of independence.
CiU + ERC
The alliance that Pujol always avoided. Nationalist though he was, he was canny enough (unlike the Basque PNV) to know what fate befalls anyone who attempts to ride a tiger. I’m not so sure about Mas. The huge damage that this coalition would do would be to polarise Catalan politics into Catalan nationalists on one side and their opponents on the other. This division has done untold harm to Basque politics.
CiU + PSC
The centre right and centre left would bury their differences and govern together. This has been done before and it is the most popular possible coalition. However, Mas will be calculating who will need his help in Madrid in 2012, and for that reason he is more likely to favour the PP.
PSC + ERC + ICV-EUiA
A repeat of the present tripartit that we have had for eight years. In 2006 Montilla said that he wouldn’t repeat it. Then he saw the figures and did repeat it. This time he says that he won’t repeat it. We will see what happens. It is true that the government has fallen to pieces and Montilla is justifiably exasperated with his partners. ERC will require a referendum on independence as a prerequisite for joining any government. But if CiU won’t play ball and the figures add up, he might just go for it. I wouldn’t trust him not to.
PSC + PP
Theoretically possible, but this has been ruled out by the PSC, probably convincingly. The PP wouldn’t want it either, and why should they if CiU is there? This coalition works in the very special conditions of the Basque Country, where it offered a means of putting the nationalists out of power for once.
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
Ah yes, the issues. The big one is the Estatut, the Statute of Autonomy that defines Catalonia’s relations with the rest of Spain. It is an issue that generates an awful lot of heat and very little light. The PP took it to the Constitutional Court, which made a few amendments (here). Good lord, you’d think Philip V was back with his Bourbon storm troopers!
A law was passed this year which will defend and promote Catalan culture by requiring all dubbed foreign-language films to be dubbed into Catalan. In the case of non-EU (i.e. mainly Hollywood) films there is a quota of 50% for Catalan versions. This idea was first floated in 1999, when Hollywood just said no and Pujol had to back down. This time the law has been passed and comes into effect in January. The regulations under which it will work have not yet been approved. And there is the slight problem that Hollywood has announced that it will refuse to co-operate, that it will not dub any of its films, showing only the original version in Catalonia.
Then there’s local government. Spain is divided into provinces that correspond to the French départements. Clearly a system that is used in Spain is unacceptable to the Catalan nation, and anyway in the Roman empire a province was governed centrally and had no local power so the name is quite intolerable. So we have to change it all and have a system of vegueries instead.
Any other issues? Well there’s always the economy I suppose once the more important things have been dealt with.
And finally there is onanism. Francisco Pérez de los Cobos, a candidate for Spain’s Constitutional Court, wrote in 2006 that ‘In Catalonia there is no self-respecting political event without one or more manifestations of onanism’. That’s what he thinks of Catalan politicians – and I wonder why. He is proposed by PP and PSOE. ERC mentioned his ‘brilliant CV’ but abstained and CiU say he is ‘a good candidate’ but they voted against (El País).
WHAT WILL I DO?
I have no vote in this election but I do always consider the issues and decide who I would vote for if I could. This time, for the very first time in my life, I feel (at present anyway) that I would cast a blank vote. Not that I would stay at home, but that I would go to the polling station and place an empty envelope in the box.
Recent Comments