In the rest of Spain a wave of nationalist sentiment has seen a clear shift to the right, with some polls showing the PP and Ciudadanos, the two main right-wing parties, winning an absolute majority if general elections were held today. Podemos, the only major Spanish party to vote against suspending Catalan autonomy, has found it difficult to operate in a climate dominated by the national question. Defending an alternative federal model for the country that would recognize the right to decide, they have repeatedly been painted as “traitors” and close allies of the independence movement by much of the Spanish media. [...]
It remains acute. The Catalan crisis is a fundamentally political one and cannot be resolved judicially or through the detention of political leaders. With the imposition of direct rule, Spain might have won as a state but it has failed as a nation. Indeed at the origin of this crisis is the historical failure to construct a form of political coexistence in Spain that could aggregate the national differences and political wills into a more universal imagined community. [...]
At the same time the pro-independence parties’ strategy based around a “process of disconnection” from the Spanish state has also failed. The idea that through a series of parliamentary declarations and one-off mobilizations Catalonia was going to secede from Spain underestimated both the coercive powers of the Spanish state and the lengths to which it would go to maintain Catalonia as part of its territory. The regional elections in December look likely to result in a further impasse. The pro-independence parties might maintain their slim majority of seats but they don’t, as yet, have the capacity to advance their historic objectives. [...]
It is true for a moment on October 1st the independence movement managed to overcome its own limitations, moving from an identitarian idea of the Catalans as “a people” to a democratic sense of “we the people”. The vote succeeded as a form of popular mobilization, incorporating many who didn’t support independence but believed in the right to decide. But it should not be understood as a referendum capable of giving the Catalan government a mandate for independence. And from the moment it was interpreted as such, the possibility of building upon this mobilization to construct a broader majoritarian bloc closed. [...]
Podemos needs to concentrate on strategic considerations, but at the same time we also clearly have to respond to the demand from much of Spanish society to get rid of the current government. In theory this would involve enabling the PSOE to govern in minority while we remained in opposition. But even this seems difficult right now as it would only be possible numerically with the support of Basque and Catalan nationalists. We have to acknowledge that the opening which the re-election of Pedro Sánchez represented has closed again.
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