Turn in Catalan politics
It is quite likely that the rise of Aliança Catalana reflected in mea culpa, more than one party and union will assume at least part of the responsibility. The most significant element of the shift we are discussing is, therefore, that a part of the pro-independence electorate has stopped prioritizing the national issue almost exclusively to begin emphasizing the issues listed before: immigration (perceived as excessive), security (repeat criminal offenses, etc.), or the preservation of ways of being and existing (the clothing of some Muslim women, etc.). According to CEO data the number of responses reinforcing the impression that there are more immigrants in Catalonia than actually live there has doubled... in just one year! We are therefore not facing a percentage anecdote, but a real change of direction. These perceptions –not necessarily correlatable with objective data– are the perfect fuel for any political formation that decides to articulate discontent in terms of cultural protection and defense of the territory.
A 23% of Junts voters from 2024 would now opt for Aliança Catalana. This is also not anecdotal. In any case, and considering how the situation has evolved, it is not really an ideological transfer in the classic sense, but rather an emotional one. Over the past few months, I have had conversations with people who, very frankly, have explained to me that they feel displaced by an institutional independence movement that they perceive as bureaucratized, urban/Barcelona-based, and disconnected from their concerns and problems. People from Ponent, above all, whom I have known for many years and who do not fit at all with what we usually understand by "far-right." In fact, according to the poll commissioned by ARA, Aliança Catalana could end up being the leading political force in the Lleida regions.
The PSC globally maintains its leadership, although the simultaneous rise of Aliança Catalana and Vox – up to 39 potential seats between them – indicates that polarization in terms of culture war is spreading transversally. The left will perhaps retain the parliamentary majority, but it will do so in a context where public debate is shifting, increasingly decisively, towards identity and security, areas in which it has always played in a hesitant, or even ambiguous, manner, for fear of getting hurt. Catalonia is no longer the European exception. The oasis without significant far-right – the oasis that never existed – has disappeared. The rise of Aliança Catalana reproduces patterns observed in France, Italy, and the Netherlands: fairly specific zones and age groups as epicenters of defensive voting, combined with the diffuse, but not necessarily imaginary, discontent we have discussed before. In this regard, the poll published by ARA on Sunday announces not just an electoral change, but a real shift that goes beyond parliamentary arithmetic and usual electoral fluctuations. The independence movement is fracturing between a pragmatic and institutional current (ERC, Junts) and an identity-based option perceived almost as anti-system. The self-styled "constitutionalism" is reorganizing between an expanded center-left (PSC) and an unashamedly Francoist and very belligerent right (PP/Vox). Today, the Catalan political battle has little to do with the year 2017, despite certain leaderships suggesting otherwise. The narrative in dispute is now who we are and who we want to be (or perhaps who, or what, we do not want to be...).).