Important victory of the parties pro-Independence, in the elections of the last sunday, February 14 in Catalonia.
In the middle of a pandemic wave, all the political parties of Catalonia, except the PSOE agreed to delay the election day until May 30,, but, the Spanish judiciary system forced to make the elections the February 14, supporting an allegation of the PSOE, in the hope that Spanish forces would take the control earlier, but it backfired, like always.
Under the Spanish law the mail vote is very difficult to do and the people, even the people infected with Covid-19 was forced to go to the voting places, and even worse, many people was forced to work the entire day in the voting places receiving the voters and counting the results, including to receive the infected voters, in the last hour before to close the voting places.
All it reflects the level of anxiety of the Spanish nationalism, specially the PSOE, in their wish of winning the power in Catalonia.
But again they failed big in Catalonia.
The tournout in Catalonia dropped from a 79% in 2017 to a 51%. And like always happens it dropped more in the Spanish nationalist side than in the Catalan nationalist side. The Spanish strategists always forget that this is the main election for the Catalan nationalists, and in overall terms they do bigger effort to go to vote.
As Consequence, the results have been:
PSOE: 33 (+16)
ERC: 33 (+1)
JuntsxCat: 32 (-2)
Vox: 11 (+11)
CUP: 9 (+5)
ECP: 8 (=0)
Ciudadanos: 6 (-30)
PP: 3 (-1)
The pro-Independence majority (ERC, JuntsxCat, CUP) increased from 70/135 to 74/135.
The percentage of the pro-independence parties reached a 51.35% of the vote.
And the pro-referendum of self-determination majority (the same + ECP) increased from 78/135 to 82/135.
The percentage of the pro-referendum of self-determination reached a 58.83%.
The PSOE increased from 17 to 33 (with a 23.04% of the vote).
The Spanish right (Vox, PP and Ciudadanos) imploded from 40 to 20.
The percentage of the Spanish nationalist forces of left and right reached a 40.25%
The Spanish PSOE has not option to form gouvernment. All the parties pro-independence rejected agreements with them by supporting the shut-down of the Catalan autonomy and the judiciary action against the leaders of the catalan nationalist parties. Also the situation under the judiciary Spanish system or in the exile of pro-independence leaders, including of ERC, is a major obstacle for agreements with the PSOE.
Basically the alone party the PSOE can pact with is ECP.
While these results have been presented like a big victory of Pedro Sánchez Spanish President (Prime Minister), his victory is over the Spanish right, but his position is weakened again in relation with the Catalan (and Basque) nationalism. Pedro Sánchez seems to forget thanks to who is he in power, and after some nationalist generous gifts has been attacking to the Catalan nationalism in order to look cooler to the Spanish right, but soon is likely to get some serious reminds.
ERC, the party of the current acting President of Catalonia Pere Aragonès, is leading the formation of new gouvernment and invited to JuntsxCat, CUP and ECP to take part. They are the parties pro-referendum of self-determination.
JuntsxCat is certainly to join, with the Vice-President and approximately a half of the gourvernment.
Unlike in previous legislatures, the CUP is considering to enter in the gouvernment.
And likely ECP (part of Podemos) will decline the invitation, because they consider themselves not compatible with JuntxCat, and they have not power to force them out. It likely will produce a gouvernment basically of the same current catalan nationalist majority.
ERC do not want a support of the PSOE, because a pro-independence gouvernment in Catalonia allows to all the pro-independence parties to avoid dependence of the PSOE, and to propose their own agenda to the PSOE and Podemos in the Spanish gouvernment.
The strong defeat of Ciudadanos and the PP vs Vox in the Spanish right (extreme right all them in fact), is leading to important problems in both parties at Spanish level. Vox seems winning the lead in the political representation of the old Francoism.
And not only the PSOE, Spain has a strong problem with the judiciary system, the military and the police forces, because they remain untouched since the Francoism and are totally plagued of fascism. In fact Catalonia and the Basque Country are the perfect places to see the strenght of the vote to Vox of these groups of Spanish gouvernment workers, from an analysis of the vote at precinct level.