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The road to 27-S

The need to keep the sovereignty process alive was the backdrop to negotiations between CiU and ERC

When more than two mil­lion vot­ers went to the polls on No­vem­ber 9 to ex­press their opin­ions on the fu­ture of the coun­try, the con­tin­u­ance of Cat­alo­nia's sov­er­eignty process was as­sured. How­ever, what to do next im­me­di­ately be­came the con­cern. De­spite the gen­eral ac­cep­tance that plebiscite elec­tions would now be needed to pro­vide the legal le­git­i­macy de­prived from the No­vem­ber vote, no de­ci­sion on how to pro­ceed could take place with­out the two main sov­er­eignty par­ties, Con­vergència i Unió (CiU) and Es­querra Re­pub­li­cana de Catalunya (ERC) find­ing com­mon ground. Both par­ties had put their dif­fer­ences aside to make the No­vem­ber vote a suc­cess, but could they do so again and make plebiscite elec­tions a re­al­ity?

From the be­gin­ning, pres­i­dent and CiU leader, Artur Mas, in­sisted on the sov­er­eignty par­ties stand­ing in the elec­tion to­gether on a joint unity can­di­dacy list. How­ever, this as­pect of Mas's sov­er­eignty road map was also the main stick­ing point, as ERC pre­ferred par­ties stand­ing sep­a­rately. On No­vem­ber 13, Mas met rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the sov­er­eignty par­ties in the search for al­lies and sup­port for his gov­ern­ment's bud­get pro­posal due be­fore par­lia­ment early in the new year. That meet­ing brought lit­tle progress and just served to show how far apart the CiU and ERC were.

Yet, as al­ter­na­tive al­liances with other par­ties be­came in­creas­ingly un­likely, Cat­alo­nia's gov­ern­ing party was all but forced into bring­ing ERC round to its way of think­ing. At the end of No­vem­ber, Mas made the first over­tures, pre­sent­ing his “win­ning for­mula” for in­de­pen­dence by late 2016 and stat­ing he would re­tire from the front line once the elec­tion was won. Mas wanted plebiscite elec­tions with can­di­da­cies free of po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion, with par­ties, civil so­ci­ety and spe­cial­ists, fol­lowed by an in­terim unity gov­ern­ment.

Mixed re­sponse

The pres­i­dent's pro­pos­als re­ceived a mixed re­sponse. ERC's ob­jec­tions to Mas's road map were based on a be­lief that a joint can­di­dacy list would not gain the nec­es­sary ab­solute ma­jor­ity in par­lia­ment and just chase cen­tre-left vot­ers into the arms of Podemos. And, at the end of No­vem­ber, Jun­queras pre­sented his own sov­er­eignty road map, call­ing for im­me­di­ate elec­tions and sep­a­rate can­di­dacy lists.

As the po­lit­i­cal par­ties faced off, all civil so­ci­ety could do was wait and see. The pub­lic in Cat­alo­nia had been a key dri­ving force be­hind the process, but it now found it­self wait­ing on the out­come of pri­vate dis­cus­sions be­tween po­lit­i­cal lead­ers. Civil or­gan­i­sa­tions like the As­sem­blea Na­cional Cata­lana (ANC) now found them­selves some­what side­lined. In fact, at the end of No­vem­ber, the ANC with­drew from the de­bate out of fear of de­rail­ing the po­lit­i­cal process. From here on, progress would have to come out of the cross-party ne­go­ti­a­tions. At the start of De­cem­ber, Oriol Jun­queras made the first move, de­tail­ing his pro­pos­als in a speech be­fore par­lia­ment. The mes­sage was the same: ERC sup­ported im­me­di­ate elec­tions with the par­ties stand­ing sep­a­rately. How­ever, the pres­i­dent re­mained un­moved.

The first round of talks took place on De­cem­ber 10, with Mas and Jun­queras meet­ing for an hour. With lit­tle real progress made, the main point of con­tention re­mained: Mas's joint list against Jun­queras's sep­a­rate lists. And, as usual, a stated will­ing­ness on be­half of both par­ties to reach agree­ment. Hopes of find­ing con­sen­sus de­pended in large part on ap­proval of the gov­ern­ment's bud­get pro­pos­als, a pre­cur­sor for any move to­wards in­de­pen­dence. As a re­sult, ERC's next move was a “ges­ture of gen­eros­ity”, an­nounc­ing it would fa­cil­i­tate the first pas­sage of the bud­get if the gov­ern­ment called plebiscite elec­tions within a month. Then, on De­cem­ber 20, Jun­queras turned up the pres­sure, an­nounc­ing his party would offer Artur Mas the pres­i­dency in a Cata­lan unity gov­ern­ment even if his party was de­feated at the polls. CiU was not im­pressed and ac­cused ERC of cre­at­ing “dis­trac­tion ma­noeu­vres”.

Yet, such skir­mishes were no sub­sti­tute for a ne­go­ti­ated set­tle­ment. The next meet­ing took place as the new year ap­proached in a sum­mit with the lead­ers and rep­re­sen­ta­tives of civil so­ci­ety. Again there was lit­tle progress. With the par­ties stick­ing to their po­si­tions in pub­lic, a fur­ther meet­ing took place be­tween Mas and Jun­queras on Jan­u­ary 5. What emerged from this meet­ing was a three list sce­nario with the pres­i­dent stand­ing on one can­di­dacy list along­side pres­ti­gious in­de­pen­dence sup­port­ers, while CUP and ERC stood sep­a­rately. On Jan­u­ary 9, Mas re­quested an­other meet­ing from Jun­queras after leaks sug­gested that ERC con­sid­ered a deal on the three list so­lu­tion all but been agreed. Mas dis­abused his op­po­site num­ber and sent him three more pro­pos­als in an ef­fort to “unjam” ne­go­ti­a­tions. Time was run­ning out as the Jan­u­ary 15 dead­line ap­proached. The only al­ter­na­tive to agree­ment was Mas see­ing out his term, even with­out the sup­port of ERC.

On Jan­u­ary 1, Mas said the process has be­come “com­pli­cated”. At this point, ERC was let­ting it be known that it ap­proved of the three-list so­lu­tion, though the stick­ing point was the date of the elec­tions, which the re­pub­li­cans wanted in March. Fi­nally, with the words “this has been a night­mare”, Mas, after weeks of push and shove, fi­nally an­nounced agree­ment be­tween CiU and ERC on Jan­u­ary 14. The cen­tral point of the agree­ment was set­ting the elec­tion date for Sep­tem­ber 27. At the same time, the two par­ties, with the sup­port of civil or­gan­i­sa­tions, agreed to pre­sent sep­a­rate can­di­da­cies and, until Sep­tem­ber 27, work at strength­en­ing the struc­tures of state. In short, Mas climbed down over his joint unity list, while ERC de­cided to let go the in­sis­tence on March elec­tions. The key and the next chal­lenge up would be ERC's sup­port for the bud­get.


Not only did CiU's Artur Mas and ERC's Oriol Jun­queras man­age to renew the mu­tual trust they first showed back in No­vem­ber dur­ing the 9-N par­tic­i­pa­tive process, they also re-es­tab­lished di­a­logue in mid-Jan­u­ary by fi­nally com­ing to an agree­ment that has since made it pos­si­ble for the sov­er­eignty process to con­tinue. The long and wind­ing road to­wards Cat­alo­nia's in­de­pen­dence, which in the weeks lead­ing up to the agree­ment even the pres­i­dent ad­mit­ted had be­come “bogged down”, not only re­mains in­tact but has ar­guably been strength­ened. CiU and ERC, al­beit under the pres­sure of dead­lines, media and in­de­pen­dence or­gan­i­sa­tions rep­re­sent­ing an im­pa­tient pub­lic, have made de­ci­sions of great sig­nif­i­cance, and set a date for the elec­tions. Elec­tions are al­ways im­por­tant, but the plebiscite elec­tion on Sep­tem­ber 27 is vital, as it has to stand in for the bind­ing ref­er­en­dum that the Span­ish gov­ern­ment has so far pre­vented Cat­alo­nia from hold­ing.

The Sep­tem­ber elec­tions, just a few days after Cat­alo­nia's na­tional day, which this year promises to be truly spec­tac­u­lar, should not be al­lowed to turn into a po­lit­i­cal strug­gle be­tween Mas and Jun­queras. What it has to be in­stead is a bat­tle with the state. There were no win­ners or losers in the Jan­u­ary 14 agree­ment. In­stead, op­por­tu­ni­ties were cre­ated and the ten­sion be­tween CiU and ERC was eased in the run-up to the local elec­tions in May. Sub­se­quent agree­ments be­tween the two par­ties will be what paves the way for Cata­lan sov­er­eignty, so that the suc­cess of the process is as­sured in Sep­tem­ber.

There is no al­ter­na­tive. Be­tween now and the day of the vote, CiU and ERC must con­tinue to work to­gether to not only im­prove on the agree­ments reached so far, but to come to more un­der­stand­ings. The two par­ties, along with the other play­ers in the sov­er­eignty camp, need to cre­ate joint strate­gies that will lead to the set­ting up of the es­sen­tial struc­tures of state that an in­de­pen­dent Cat­alo­nia will need. Above all, every­thing nec­es­sary must be done to en­sure that the re­sult of the Sep­tem­ber elec­tion is a clear and con­vinc­ing “yes” to in­de­pen­dence. There is no room for doubt, es­pe­cially as the elec­tion re­sult needs to go over the head of the Madrid gov­ern­ment and con­vince the in­ter­na­tional com­mu­nity.

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