For all that it sounds like a cliché, it is true that there is a lot at stake in the Spanish general election this Sunday. Yet the Catalan electorate can exert little solid influence on most of the questions in play. For example, victory in this election depends fundamentally on the Spaniards, since of the 350 seats, only 47 are chosen by the four Catalan provinces. The risk of a win by the so-called Spanish right in Catalonia is also a non-issue, since the three right-wing parties (Popular Party, Ciudadanos and Vox) come last in the vast majority of the polls of Catalan voters and, in some, the PP and Vox are even forecast to be left without seats or with just a couple.
Let’s not fool ourselves: in Catalonia, the elections will be read according to the support that the pro-independence parties receive and by the strength they achieve to affect a government in Spain. In the general election of June 2016, they reached 17 seats - nine Republican Left (ERC) and eight centre-right Convergents (CDC) - and 32.07% of votes. The left-wing En Comú Podem, pro-Catalan sovereignty but nonaligned on independence, won the elections with 24.5%, taking a dozen seats in the Congress of Deputies. Any result in seats or votes for the independence parties that falls short of 2016 would be a very bad result. It would put at risk many of the strategic choices that have been made in recent years and would draw into question the 1st October 2017 referendum and the steps taken that month.
This is the news that Spain’s deep state hopes for this Sunday: to be able to proclaim that the independence movement is retreating in Catalonia and that the policy of financial asphyxiation (practiced by both Rajoy and Sánchez, since neither of them has advanced the new autonomous communities financing system while in government), the suspension of autonomy under article 155, and the prison and exile of the dismissed government in 2017 has yielded results. The independence movement avoided falling into the trap by winning the Catalan elections on 21st December 2017 and proving that the ballot boxes are their great ally and their great defence. And a very good way of proceeding in international eyes.
This Sunday there is much at stake, as in all elections. There are reasons both for raised hopes and for discouragement. These last few weeks we have heard so many attacks on Catalonia that nobody should stay home today. Every pro-sovereignty or pro-independence vote that fails to be exercised is in effect a vote in favour of 155, of suppressing Catalan public media, of declines in the Catalan language and the educational model. That is why it is important for the ballot boxes to be filled with votes, just as happened on December 21st, 2017. This is the best response to the Supreme Court trial, the deprivation of freedom of the political prisoners and the desire for return of the exiles.