The other eighty per cent

Span­ish prime min­is­ter, Pedro Sánchez, has de­manded con­sen­sus of over 75% from Cata­lan so­ci­ety. Over time there have been nu­mer­ous polls that say some 80% of Cata­lans are in favour of re­solv­ing the po­lit­i­cal con­flict be­tween Cat­alo­nia and Spain with a ref­er­en­dum, but there is also an­other 80% that Sánchez needs to ad­dress: al­most 8 out of 10 Cata­lans say they are not sat­is­fied with how democ­racy works in Spain, ac­cord­ing to the lat­est poll by the Cen­tre of Opin­ion Stud­ies (CEO), with only 16% say­ing they are sat­is­fied.

Most think that politi­cians do not take what peo­ple think into con­sid­er­a­tion and are only out for their own ben­e­fit, al­though they also think every­day peo­ple can in­flu­ence what par­ties do. What’s more, Span­ish politi­cians score worse than their Cata­lan coun­ter­parts, with an av­er­age score of 2.2 and 4 out of 10, re­spec­tively.

After an au­tumn of protests and a win­ter ahead marked by the trial of pro-in­de­pen­dence lead­ers, 66% of Cata­lans be­lieve so­cial protest is an ef­fi­cient tool for mak­ing po­lit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tives change di­rec­tion, while 25% think tak­ing to the streets is use­less. The poll was car­ried out in Oc­to­ber and No­vem­ber.

The feel­ing that democ­racy in Spain is de­fi­cient is wide­spread in Cat­alo­nia. The dis­af­fec­tion with Span­ish in­sti­tu­tions is also re­flected in a re­jec­tion of the Con­sti­tu­tion: if a ref­er­en­dum on the 1978 Con­sti­tu­tion were to take place today, some 57% of Cata­lans would vote against it.

When Cata­lans are asked about the coun­try’s main prob­lems, dis­sat­is­fac­tion with politi­cians is top (40%), fol­lowed by the re­la­tion­ship be­tween Cat­alo­nia and Spain (36%). In the pre­vi­ous poll, the num­bers were the other way around, while the per­cent­age of Cata­lans who think dis­sat­is­fac­tion with pol­i­tics is the main prob­lem has grown from 23% to 27%.