Former president Carles Puigdemont, still on the run from Spanish Justice, would win the Catalan elections to ERCaccording to the NC Report survey carried out after the announcement by the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, that he was dissolving the Parliament and calling the polls on May 12.
In these elections, two battles are played in parallel. On the one hand, the examination of President Pedro Sánchez, who needs former minister Salvador Illa to obtain such an extraordinary result that he is capable of reaching the Presidency of the Generalitat: it is not enough for him to be the most voted list, in a tie in seats. with ERC, as already happened in 2021, because the impact of the amnesty raises the bar of demand. The poll gives the PSC the victory, with 36-37 seats, an increase of three hundred thousand votes and three or four more deputies. And six seats above the second party, Junts. But the second battle is fought within the independence movement, over who wins, which would be Puigdemont, and whether they are in a position to maintain the Generalitat with the support of the CUP, as would happen by adding between 62 and 64 deputies. The CUP would retain seven of the nine seats it has in this legislature.
Therefore, the notable rise of Illa, Sánchez's personal bet to give meaning to the motto that links the amnesty with a new stage of reconciliation and overcoming the sovereignty confrontation, may not work if these are the results of the elections. Unless, in line with the bet of the Catalan elite, he was able to weave a tripartite headed by him, with ERC as a consort, and putting those from En Comú Podem (ECP) into the same equation. The magic formula that some economic strata dream of to finally turn the page on the independence movement. In Comú, by the way, she would lose two seats, which predicts that these elections will be another blow for the vice president and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, in an electoral cycle in which it is anticipated that she will not have the opportunity to congratulate herself on the progress of her acronym.
There are 135 deputies in the Parliament, so the number of seats that any force needs to reach an absolute majority is 68. In 2017, for example, Ciudadanos won the elections with 36 seats, three more than Illa obtained. in 2021, and 25.26% of the votes. More or less what the former minister would have today, according to this survey. However, the affirmative vote of Junts, ERC and the abstention of the CUP allowed Quim Torra to proclaim himself president.
From this background, and with these data on the table, it can be deduced that reconciliation and amnesty may not be enough of a balm to prevent the recurrence of an alliance of the independence movement if they are still in a position to achieve an absolute majority. Junts would be in second position, with 32/33 seats, up to 224,117 more votes, which opens up the possibility of gaining a deputy, while ERC moves on the scale of 30-31, which leads it to lose between two and three representatives in Parliament. These data would confirm that Puigdemont is making profitable his strategy of proposing a push for maximums to the coalition government, pBut, above all, the expectation of his possible return to Catalonia as president of the Generalitat. The worsening of the polls and the analysis that there was no longer political room to improve the situation is what moved ERC to call elections without waiting for the legislature to end at the beginning of the 25th.
The personal and political relations between ERC and Junts are broken, to the point that Puigdemont faces this exam as a third opportunity to exact revenge on
Oriol Junqueras and ERC. Puigdemont was a candidate in 2017, when he played with the ambiguity and conveyed the idea that he could be sworn in from a distance. He came second, behind Arrimadas, but the Republicans did not allow him to be inaugurated remotely, for which they have not forgiven them. In 2021 he was symbolically part of the lists again and came third. He is now preparing his candidacy and says that he will attend the investiture because the amnesty law will already be in force.
On the right, the growth of the PP is relevant (the survey was carried out when it has not yet been specified what the collaboration project between PP and Ciudadanos will become). Without having yet confirmed who will be its candidate -Alejandro Fernández is not yet official-, the Catalan PP would go from the current three seats to a range of between 12 and 13, with a growth in votes of up to 222,587. While Vox, which has always benefited from these moments of high territorial confrontation, could lose between one and two seats. The demoscopy interprets it as another symptom of the process of reunification of the vote in the center-right against the coalition government.
In that sense, The PP is the party with the most vote loyalty, up to 88.6%, followed by Junts, which has it at 85.4% compared to ERC's 72.7%. That of the socialists is 78%.