Catalonia is once again in the hands of the independence

USPA NEWS - The political center won the regional elections held on Thursday December 21 in Catalonia. However, the region is once again in the hands of the independentists who, together, have the absolute majority necessary to continue with their divorce from Spain. The conservative Popular Party of the Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, sank in the polls and is on the verge of political irrelevance in the region.

The winner of the elections was the centrist party Citizens, which won 25% of the votes and won 37 seats, 12 more than in the previous legislature. Second was Together for Catalonia (JpC its Spanish acronym), the party of the former president Carles Puigdemont, who won 34 seats. Puigdemont, who is on the run in Belgium, declared on Thursday night that the elections had meant “the victory of the Catalan republic over the monarchy of [article] 155.“ After him, in third place, was Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC its Spanish acronym), whose leader, former vice president of the Catalan government, Oriol Junqueras, is in prison. ERC won 32 seats.

The rest of the parties were left behind. The Socialist Party won 17 seats, one more than in the previous term. Catalunya en Comú, a far-left formation that feeds on social movements that are dissatisfied with capitalism, won 8 seats, three less than in the previous term. But the great defeated were the anti-system coalition CUP, which remains with four seats, four fewer than before, and the conservative Popular Party, which won three seats after losing three others. The party that supports the Government of the Primer Minister Mariano Rajoy is on the verge of political irrelevance in Catalonia.

Despite winning the elections, Citizens will not be able to form a government. Even with the support of the also constitutionalist Socialist Party and Popular Party, the sum of the three parties yields a result of 57 seats, far from the 68 that grant the absolute majority. Quite the opposite of the independence bloc: the seats of Together for Catalonia, ERC and the CUP add up to 70. They reach, therefore, the absolute majority.

But the Catalan political panorama remains complex. The support of the CUP to the independentists parties is conditional on the unilateral declaration of independence. On the other hand, the pro-independence parties have eight elected deputies in jail or fugitives and that can condition the voting. It opens a period of negotiations that can lead to pacts for the governability of Catalonia, but the specter of new elections in June has not dissipated.