Election frenzy

Local elec­tions

The first round of the po­lit­i­cal roller­coaster be­gins with the local elec­tions on May 24. Cat­alo­nia's 947 local coun­cils are up for grabs in an elec­tion that sov­er­eign­tists por­tray as the first chance to strike a real blow to­wards a new state. The cam­paign­ing pe­riod runs for a fort­night be­tween May 8 and May 22. After the elec­tions two days later, a 10-day pe­riod opens in which the re­sults can be ap­pealed. Then, on June 5, the make-up of the new coun­cils and the may­ors to lead them will be an­nounced and for­mally con­sti­tuted on June 13. Any ap­peal against the com­po­si­tion of the coun­cil has until July 3 to make its case. The en­tire local process, how­ever, is not com­plete until the mid­dle of July when the county coun­cils and the four re­gional Diputa­cions are sworn in.

Civil as­so­ci­a­tions

After fill­ing the Sant Jordi in­door sta­dium with thou­sands of sov­er­eignty sup­port­ers on April 24, as part of an at­tempt to re-en­er­gise the pub­lic with en­thu­si­asm for the process to­wards in­de­pen­dence, civil as­so­ci­a­tions like the ANC (As­sem­blea Na­cional de Catalunya) have a busy spring ahead. Apart from the ANC or­gan­is­ing events for the 27 of each month until 27-S, from June 25 to 28 Òmnium Cul­tural has its Cata­lan Week­end, in which for­eign guests will have a chance to learn about the process first-hand. The mass in­vite of for­eign guests, who will stay in vol­un­teers homes, will reach its high point on Sat­ur­day June 27 with a party for all par­tic­i­pat­ing in the ini­tia­tive in Barcelona's Port Vell.

One of the most im­por­tant dates over the next weeks will be teh ANC's in­ter­nal elec­tions to choose a new lead­er­ship. Ac­cord­ing to the or­gan­i­sa­tion's statutes, the term of the cur­rent lead­er­ship ex­pires and re­place­ments will have to be found, es­pe­cially a new pres­i­dent to sub­sti­tute the cur­rent head, Carme For­cadell. The end of this in­ter­nal process will take place at the end of May (ei­ther 23 or 30) , when the new ANC lead­er­ship is con­firmed.

Po­lit­i­cal par­ties

All of Cat­alo­nia's po­lit­i­cal par­ties need to be in good shape going into the Sep­tem­ber elec­tions. How­ever, there are some key hur­dles for them to over­come be­fore they can make the final push for par­lia­men­tary seats. On May 30, for ex­am­ple, Es­querra Re­pub­li­cana de Catalunya (ERC) will choose its new lead­er­ship.

Mean­while, on June 14, Unió's mem­ber­ship will gather to fi­nalise the party's strat­egy to­wards the sov­er­eignty process. With Unió's coali­tion part­ner Con­vergència (CDC, the party of pres­i­dent Artur Mas) com­ing out so clearly in favour of the sov­er­eignty process, re­la­tions have been strained be­tween the two. Unió's mem­ber­ship is more re­luc­tant to throw in its lot with the other sov­er­eignty par­ties (such as ERC and CUP) mean­ing that the re­sult of this meet­ing could make for a va­ri­ety of in­ter­est­ing sce­nar­ios.

All of this po­lit­i­cal po­si­tion­ing will go on at the same time as ap­pear­ances in par­lia­ment by a num­ber of fig­ures in­volved in on­go­ing cor­rup­tion cases, such as Macià Alave­dra on June 2, Manuel Bus­tos on June 8 and Luis Bárce­nas on June 15. A surge of news about the abuse of power could be tricky for the par­ties with voter ap­a­thy and cyn­i­cism po­ten­tially work­ing against en­thu­si­asm for the process.

Road map

A fea­ture of the lead-up to the Sep­tem­ber elec­tions from the be­gin­ning has been agree­ment over a joint road map. As the aim of the sov­er­eign­tists is to turn 27-S into a plebiscite, a joint strat­egy for gath­er­ing sup­port for the process is es­sen­tial. After much wran­gling, par­ties and the main civil or­gan­i­sa­tions man­aged to come to a pre-agree­ment on a joint sov­er­eignty road map on at the end of March. Au­gust 3 is the date set for mak­ing the pre-agree­ment de­fin­i­tive. But be­fore that hap­pens, we wait to see if par­ties such as Unió or EUiA de­cide to sign. For a de­c­la­ra­tion of in­de­pen­dence to be vi­able, the win­ners of 27-S need an ab­solute ma­jor­ity, mak­ing progress on how to go about cre­at­ing a new Cata­lan state is es­sen­tial.