Stab in the back by the ERC party leadership against the Catalan sovereignty movement
Due to the mass abstention of Catalan supporters of sovereignty in the elections to the Catalan parliament on 12 May 2024, the legitimacy of which is debatable, the Spanish Social Democrats (PSC) led by Salvador Illa became the strongest force in the Catalan parliament with only 872.959 votes and 42 seats. The absolute majority is 68 votes.
Salvador Illa has always been a staunch supporter and apologist of the unlawful coup d'état from above, which in October 2017 dissolved a democratically elected parliament in free elections and declared a democratic government deposed for the first time in Western Europe since Hitler (without sufficient formal basis in Spanish law, in explicit violation of the organic law of the Spanish state and without material reason) and contrary to the Spanish legal order. Illa wants to prevent Catalonia's sovereignty in the form of a separate state without any ifs or buts and is doing everything in his power to ensure that the Catalan nation continues to belong to the Spanish-dominated multi-ethnic state of the Kingdom of Spain.
N. N.: ‘Salvador Illa, el capità de l'espanyolisme del PSC que albira la Generalitat a l'horitzó:
el dirigent del PSC ha amenaçat amb el 155, vol més castellà a les aules i s'ha manifestat amb Societat Civil Catalana’, in: https://www.vilaweb.cat/noticies/salvador-illa-capita-espanyolisme-psc-155-catala-societat-civil-catalana/ (last accessed on 31 July 2024).
In negotiations with the party leaderships of the two Catalan parties Esquerra Republicana (ERC, 20 seats) and Comuns Sumar (6 seats), he has achieved that both party leaderships are prepared to support his election as President of Catalonia. It is surprising that the pact between his PSC party and the ERC, which has since become public, contains nothing concrete or verifiable that would be of use to either the ERC party or Catalonia, apart from flowery formulations, nebulous declarations of intent and fine words:
N. N.: ‘ Investidura: Aquest és el text de l'acord entre Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya i el PSC - Consulta els detalls de l'acord entre els republicans i els socialistes’, in: https://www.elnacional.cat/ca/politica/aquest-es-text-acord-entre-esquerra-republicana-catalunya-psc_1260770_102.html (last accessed on 31 July 2024).
The ERC party, whose leadership appears to be preparing not only to leave the camp of those in favour of sovereignty, but also to inflict maximum damage on it, is well aware that the election of the staunch unionist Salvador Illa as President of Catalonia could mean the end of the Catalan independence movement for the time being. The actual reasons and motives for this radical change of course, which appears to be tantamount to a betrayal of the party's century-old history, are not yet known.
On Friday, the party members will vote on the proposal of their party leadership. The Social Democrats are currently holding back on statements about their desired pact with ERC and want to wait and see what the ERC members decide on 2 July 2024.
Many prominent Catalans and the influential ANC have spoken out against Salvador Illa being elected with ERC votes. It remains to be seen whether the party members will be prepared to support the radical 180-degree turnaround or whether they will reject the proposal of their party leadership.
The Esquerra Republicana party, which has been in favour of Catalan independence for many decades, is at a crossroads. Will it reflect on its history or will it stab the independence movement in the back by electing Salvador Illa as President of the Generalitat de Catalunya?
In particular due to Spain's permanent refusal to recognise the collective human rights of the Catalan people as such, which they are entitled to under mandatory international law as well as the Spanish constitution, and Esquerra Republicana's reversal of course, it is to be expected that more and more Catalans will turn away from the parliamentary system and seek their country's independence from Spain by other means. If human rights, democracy and the rule of law are massively violated and suppressed over a longer period of time, as has been the case in Spain since at least 2017, the influence of parliamentarily elected politicians will decline, while at the same time we can expect an increasing willingness to resort to violence and all that this can entail.
It is not yet too late. Spain could still return to the rule of law and fulfil its international obligations as well as its constitutional duty to guarantee human rights in Catalonia. But time is pressing. The peaceful politicians who have held the reins so far and wanted to achieve Catalonia's independence from Spain through a referendum are visibly losing influence. In particular, if Salvador Illa is elected President of Catalonia with the votes of ERC, which still gave the impression during the election campaign that it was in favour of Catalan independence in the form of a republic, an extra-parliamentary opposition will emerge whose actions and deeds will not be easy to predict. There are millions of Catalans who want to put an end to the monarchy in their country, and one can only hope that they will not follow the path taken by Portugal at the beginning of the 20th century.
Literature sometimes anticipates some things and is able to hold up a distorting mirror to the present. In the dystopian science fiction novel Nova Planta 2034: ni treva ni pau (2024), in which ‛clone Catalans' suddenly speak, appear and act in the same way as parts of the Spanish people have done for over five hundred years, in turn banning the use of the Spanish language and persecuting, humiliating, enslaving the Spanish with almost unrivalled cruelty, and finally even destroying Madrid with an atomic bomb in the form of a decapitation strike, the author, who writes under the pseudonym Marc Comanegra, draws on Spanish-Catalan history to show what it would be like if the Catalans were to treat the Spaniards like for like. The novel portrays the popular hatred of the Catalans and Catalonia in Spain in an exaggerated but essentially accurate way. The fact that in Nova Planta 2034 the Catalans, who have so far put up with their oppression and constant exploitation like lambs, suddenly appear just as unsympathetic, unlawful, radical, inhuman and fascist as the Spaniards and are even successful in doing so — the ‘Fundador’, a Catalan of Jewish descent, reunites the Catalan countries to form Greater Catalonia and shatters Spain's power for a long time — is a skilful psychagogical trick. The disgust initially directed at the novel's ‘Catalans’ (who are by no means real, but only fictional) and their inhuman brutality is ultimately projected onto Spanish history, whose black pages from the conquest of America to the Francoist mass murders and concentration camps in the 20th century and the brutal police violence against the Catalan people on 1 October 2017 are one of the actual themes of this novel.
Conflicts between peoples can be resolved peacefully, through dialogue and negotiation, if all sides negotiate on an equal footing. Violence eventually generates counter-violence when there seems to be no other way out. Spain must decide whether it wants to continue down the path of violence and oppression, perhaps even accepting the destruction of its capital by a nuclear bomb or other weapons one day, or whether it will accept and implement the peaceful solution scenarios offered by the United Nations for such conflicts.
The attempt to install a Spanish governor in Catalonia as president of the time-honoured Generalitat de Catalunya is likely to lead to the emergence of a large extra-parliamentary opposition, should it be successful. However, it seems more likely to me that there will be new elections to the Catalan parliament because either the members of the ERC party will not follow the proposal of their leadership or individual ERC MPs will follow their conscience rather than the party's bidding in the decisive vote.
Meanwhile, despite being aware of the case of Russian opposition figure Alekséi Navalni, Catalan exile president Carles Puigdemont is planning to return to Catalonia and risk immediate arrest by a judiciary that refuses to recognise the current amnesty law. His possible arrest by Spain would be a further fuel that could cause the barrel of rage against Spain to overflow in Catalonia.
See also Ralf Streck: ‘Catalonia: Government formation from above: In Catalonia, left-wing republicans and social democrats reach agreement subject to grassroots vote’, in: nd, 30 July 2024, https://www.nd-aktuell.de/artikel/1184124.katalonien-katalonien-regierungsbildung-von-oben.html (last accessed on 31 July 2024).