Operation to woo the “Comuns”

BarcelonaForging ahead with a unilateral referendum whilst keeping open the option of a referendum negotiated with Madrid. This is the difficult balance that the independence movement has to find. After confirming the Spanish government’s belligerent refusal to negotiate, it is searching for a way to maintain the Comuns’[2] support through this new phase. A search for balance which explains why the main result of what should have been the first meeting for the unilateral path yesterday was an agreement to keep the National Pact for the Referendum[2] going. In this forum the independence movement will count on the presence of the group represented by Barcelona mayor Ada Colau, missing from yesterday’s meeting. In attendance, on the other hand, were representatives of Podemos.

The objective is, therefore, to make it more difficult for the “Comuns” to pull away from the referendum without appearing to be accomplices of the Spanish government and its ever tougher line. For this reason the Catalan government heartily welcomed the words from the leader of Podemos in Catalonia, Albano Dante Fachin, when leaving the meeting. Fachin argued for the benefits of attending the meeting called by Catalan president Carles Puigdemont because entering that room “doesn’t imply closing off others”. This is a message that the Catalan executive hopes will solidify among Fachin’s colleagues in the Catalonia Yes We Can (CQSP) parliamentary coalition, with ties to the “Comuns”.

After the summit -which started at five on the dot with representatives from the Catalan government and the Junts pel Sí, ERC, PDECat, CUP, Demòcrates, Podemos and MES parties-, the minister for the Presidency, Neus Munté, confirmed the Catalan government’s wish to speak with “everyone” to make it clear what everyone’s position is once Mariano Rajoy’s Spanish government has closed the door on negotiating an independence referendum.

Besides these bilateral meetings, a meeting of the National Pact for the Referendum is also planned for next week in which the Catalan government will set forth its plan to go ahead with the referendum despite Madrid’s ban. The government wants to know what support they can count upon within the platform. “The coming days have to be for dialogue” claim knowledgeable sources, who admit that one of the Catalan government’s priorities is to maintain as much as possible of the 83 representative majority in the parliament currently in support of a negotiated referendum.

It’s due to this that, despite not having been at the meeting, the “Comuns" became the afternoon’s protagonists. Directly or indirectly, all of the parties made reference to them. Although Munté assured that the government wants to maintain its “cross-spectrum attitude”, she criticised the “Comuns”, led by Xavier Domènech and Barcelona mayor Ada Colau, for having turned down their invitation to the summit where they could have explained their proposal to convene the Pact. “We don’t understand the excuses they’ve given for not coming”, the minister said. She noted that, in the end, the meeting had met their request: the commitment to convene the National Pact for the Referendum.

Having said that, Domènech said in a press conference yesterday that this group had already requested to convene the Pact for the Referendum last week but the government had turned them down. As in Catalunya en Comú’s version, there were “several requests” from the National Pact for the Referendum to the Catalan president to convene this space. According to the party, the president ignored them. During yesterday’s press conference Munté didn’t explicitly reference this, but she repeated that it is not up to the government to convene the Pact, but to the Pact’s board headed by Joan Ignasi Elena.

Date and question soon

Despite the invitation issued to the “Comuns" and the wish to hold a new meeting of the Pact, the minister for the Presidency was clear about the government’s commitment to setting a date and question for the referendum: “It’s essential”. Yesterday wasn’t the day for this, but that will likely come next week, once the government finishes its round of meetings. In fact, the request made by all the pro-independence parties to the executive was to promptly fix the date and question. This was repeated by the secretary general of ERC, Marta Rovira; the general coordinator of PDECat, Marta Pascal; the CUP MP Anna Gabriel; Alfons Palacios from MES and the leader of Demòcrates, Antoni Castellà. All agreed that the independence movement is heading into a new phase after the new no from Madrid. They also agreed that the wish to hold the referendum is non-negotiable. The most forceful voice, however, was Anna Gabriel’s, asking that the next meeting be called because there is already a set date and question for the referendum. As for Podemos, on whom all eyes were fixed as the representative closest to the “Comuns", Albano Dante Fachin explained that their priority isn’t to have a date and question for the referendum, rather for the government to explain under what conditions and guarantees it is readying the vote.

Spain’s threat

Hanging on the every action of the Catalan government and the pro-independence parties is the Spanish executive. Yesterday, Spanish vice-president Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría improvised an appearance to warn, even before the meeting had started in Catalonia, that the Spanish state will do whatever necessary to block the referendum. They share this objective with the Secretary General-elect of the opposition PSOE party, Pedro Sánchez, who yesterday publicly stated his support for the government’s approach. From Catalonia, PP (the governing party in Madrid) and Ciudadanos also tried to discredit the summit. They take it for granted that the independence movement will lead instead to regional snap elections in the autumn. For the moment, after a frenzied week following president Puigdemont’s conference in Madrid, the independence movement is ploughing ahead whilst watching the “Comuns" out of the corner of its eye.

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Translator’s notes:

[1] The National Pact for the Referendum (Catalan: Pacte Nacional pel Referèndum) is an organisation formed in 2016 that brings together political and social organisations, politicians and ordinary citizens in favour of holding a referendum on Catalan independence. Its original aim was to collect signatures of support. Having received more than 500,000 from individuals alone by its deadline earlier this month, discussions have begun as to what the organisation’s future should be.

[2] The Comuns (Catalan for “commons”) are the members of the new regional left-wing political alliance Catalonia in Common (Catalunya en Comú) whose position on Catalan independence remains ambiguous.