The decision of the members of the Catalan National Assembly (ANC), rebuffing the leadership's proposal to encourage the casting of null votes or of abstaining from voting in the upcoming Spanish general election, is a signficant corrective to its president, Dolors Feliu. Although the abstention rate in the internal consultation itself was exaggeratedly high, slightly above 90%, no-one can claim that as their own and the only certain fact is that of the 3,773 members of the pro-independence body who exercised their right - of the nearly 40,000 who belong to the ANC- almost 60% rejected the proposal by the presidential team and, as a result, discredited them on a fundamental issue, since the leaders had actively campaigned before the vote and the policy is central to the ANC's current strategy.
Thus, being consequent on such an important matter, given that the ANC strategy was a challenge to the pro-independence parties - ERC, Junts and the CUP - the most logical thing would be for them to submit to a confidence motion among members. If the turnout had been higher, the president would have had to submit her resignation directly, but the low attendance at the polls excuses her - for now - from this measure. In any case, it is now up to the leadership of the Catalan National Assembly to pull back and reset its strategy, if it wants to continue occupying a significant space within the pro-independence world.
Last week there was already a minor internal incident when a part of the organization as territorially important as that of Girona dissociated itself from the management and criticized that independence supporters were being asked to stay at home or cast invalid votes in the elections on July 23rd. And that, moreover, it was done without taking into account that each of the three parties had followed different strategies in Madrid. And that with such a drastic decision they were all being tarred with the same brush as part of a plan which, according to the Girona ANC, would place the Spanish unionist parties as the only beneficiaries.
This is not the only point of friction affecting the leadership of the ANC. The Association of Municipalities for Independence (AMI), which this year has been excluded by the ANC from taking part in the organization of the annual Diada rally on September 11th, has voiced its regret that, for the first time since 2012, they were not welcomed into the preparation for the key day, calling for unity, dialogue and consensus. Three words that are, all of them, very far from the situation found across the broad space of the Catalan independence movement, which has been unable to manage the success of the last Catalan election in 2021 when, for the first time, it exceeded 50% of the votes and also the 50% of the seats in Parliament. Since that result, everything has gone from one stumbling block to another, first with unity breaking down in the Catalan chamber, with the CUP dissecting off and, later, the coalition government between ERC and Junts collapsing, with the latter abandoning the executive of the Generalitat.
The ANC has tried to move from the world of associations into that of politics, behaving like just another political party. It has confronted the parties rather than seeking alliances with them - something that was, in the beginning, the reason for its foundation: to give them a boost rather than replace them. Perhaps this is why their coexistence with the AMI and Òmnium is not as straightforward as it used to be, and techniques of exclusion have prevailed more than those of building alliances.