Election Day in Catalonia

Let's look at what the Financial Times has to say

All the Catalan parties except Vox and the PP support the amnesty. If they’re lucky they’ll get about 25 seats out of the 135 available between them. And everyone knows that when the PP governs in Madrid it won’t annul it. So, no. The amnesty is not on the ballot in Catalonia.

And the election may highlight the rift in the minds of the FT’s subs but not in anyone else’s. The election campaign has been a snoozefest of epic proportions. The nationalist parties have all returned to the fold of Autonomous Community politics.

No, they’re not. Apart from the PP and Vox, everyone agrees things are much calmer than before. And polling suggests that support for independence is at a historic low.

The PSC is not the Catalan arm of the PSOE, it’s an entirely separate party that collaborates with the PSOE at the national level. Illa’s hardly mentioned the amnesty on the stump. His whole shtick is that independence and all related matters are a thing of the past. His campaign has focused on expanding the airport, building more highways, expanding the tourism industry, and the like.

Vying to do this but only rhetorically. In reality, he’s joined at the waist to the PSOE in Madrid until the amnesty law comes into effect, and that’ll be several months at least and possibly years. His effective political horizon is more autonomy, not independence. All serious political analysts here have noted this.

The amnesty won’t reprieve anyone, that’s because it’s an amnesty, not a reprieve. Among those it would benefit are dozens of Guardia Civiles and National Police officers charged with overdoing it on “referendum” day in 2017.

If the professor thinks a re-run of 2017 is in the offing he’s entitled to his view. As I am that a renewed drive for independence is less likely than me being offered the Belgian Crown.

Of course Salvador Illa, leader of the PSC and its candidate to lead the Catalan government is a close ally of Pedro Sánchez. The leaders of the PSOE and PSC always are.

That comment by Illa was aimed only tangentially at Puigdemont. Its principal target was the Madrid media-big business nexus which has been trying to bring down the national government for the last five years.

Puigdemont indeed despises Sánchez, as much for his socially and economically progressive politics as for the fact that he’s Spanish. Puigdemont is very much a tax cuts as an answer to everything guy. It’s also true that he’s a de facto ally of Sánchez in Madrid, their fates are mutually dependent. This kind of rhetoric is to assure his hard-core followers that he’s not going to fall for any Spanishist tricks.

Will award-winning journalist Jopson ever get around to the key battle in this election? No sign of it so far.

Puigdemont knows the first goal is impossible, he only talks about it for the faithful on his own side, those who trek across the Pyrenees to kiss hands and who believe that the negotiations with the government must be cooking up something big. His real-world demands are in the second sentence of the above.

Yep.

This is true but rather misses the point. Puigdemont’s real rival in the election isn’t the PSC, Illa or Sánchez, it’s ERC, the Catalan nationalist right’s eternal enemy which it has never been quite able to destroy. My guess is that Puigdemont would be quite happy to see ERC “betray Catalonia” by going into government with the PSC and Comuns Sumar. He’d then spend the next four years slamming it for collaboration with the “Spanish oppressor” and hope to win a sweeping victory the next time around.

Is this the third or fourth time he has promised to do this? I’ve lost count.

Magical things and high emotions are exactly what Puigdemont offers the Catalans. Illa offers them a feet-on-ground, reality-cognizant administration.

The FT story is here. If I can I’ll be back tonight with a quick word about the results. If not, tomorrow.