With the discretion and silence used when a death has been known about for a long time, on Saturday, the Catalan European Democratic Party (PDeCAT), founded in 2016 and heir to Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya, announced its dissolution. There has not been a political project in Catalonia more poorly managed since its origin and unable to gather under its acronym all the political capital it had built up and an exceptional municipal strength. First, the inexperience of its leaders - that ephemeral Marta Pascal - then, the inability to recognize Carles Puigdemont as its leader and, later, the failure to adapt to the Catalonia changing towards sovereignism as a new political concept.
The PDeCAT from its origin was a strange party. Those who were really in charge - let's say Carles Puigdemont, Artur Mas, Xavier Trias, Jordi Turull, Josep Rull, Quim Forn and many others - did not exercise power in the organization and those who occupied the posts were mere managers without any political clout. The real problem was when the latter believed they owned the party and the leaders who were recognizable among the public had to leave, many of whom would end up founding Together for Catalonia (Junts per Catalunya). In fact, all of them are now there except for Mas, and it can't be ruled out that he will make the move at any moment.
Its great political moment was in May 2018, with Pascal at the head of the organization, who decanted the party's stand towards supporting the motion of no-confidence against Mariano Rajoy and thus provided Pedro Sánchez with the necessary votes to reach the Spanish government. The eight deputies of the PDeCAT were decisive, in an arithmetical situation not very different from the current one. This scenario gave them excellence and colour in the media for a time and helped them navigate their decline, whose undoubted irreversibility was already apparent. In a coma and with help from outside - in all aspects - the party stood artificially in the Catalan election of 2021, in which it won zero MPs, and then ran again in the Spanish general election on July 23rd this year, again ending up without its election night scoreboard having moved at all.
Now that the political map of parties in Catalonia has been tending to settle down, all these experiments, from PDeCAT to Valents, Lliures and the Partit Nacionalista de Catalunya - and I'm sure I'm forgetting some other group - are very likely to cease to exist. And nor are they to receive any special help in standing for election and dispersing the Junts vote, because, in the end, the aim was to divert voters away from the Carles Puigdemont party. There was no space for this alleged third way and some have still not understood this, despite the defeats accumulated, until now, as they arrive at the point of absolute electoral irrelevance. In any case, it remains a challenge for Junts to live up to its name and be the repository for more political sensitivities than they have done until now.