The Catalan campaign closes with the candidates already empty of arguments and the polls without moving in a relevant way from an x-ray that anticipates a blockade that could lead to new elections. In Moncloa's electoral “kitchen” there is concern that none of the polls they have guarantee them a sufficient majority to govern, not even counting on the commons.
Junts has resisted them and they know that the former president of the Generalitat Carles Puigdemont will in no case collaborate to invest the socialist candidate, Salvador Illa. At the same time, for the PSC it would be “political suicide” to invest Puigdemont after having won the elections, and, in fact, from the party in Catalonia they say that he will do everything possible to be the new president of the Generalitat with independence. of what the consequences are on the stability of the Sánchez Government in Madrid. It is not exactly the same reasoning that is heard in Madrid behind the scenes of the official speech.
On Monday, after the votes have been counted, all the parties will also try to use their data to make them profitable in favor of their positions in the European campaign, which begins immediately. In these elections all the pressure will fall on the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and the President of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo. Sánchez is interested in ensuring that the negotiation to form a Government interferes as little as possible in a campaign with the value of revalidation of the last general elections.
The leader of Junts will in no case collaborate to invest the socialist candidate
Puigdemont will return for the investiture session, regardless of whether he is the candidate or not, and this already marks a before and after in Catalan politics after the “procés.” The formation of the Parliament Board is scheduled for June 10, and there important clues will be given as to what may happen in the negotiation to form a government.
Puigdemont has run an effective campaign without any of his main rivals daring to attack him directly for fear of giving him more prominence. This has made it easier for him to impose his story and to go through the process of the electoral contest without his rivals having tainted him. Not even ERC, which assumes that it is the main reference for the independence movement and knows that the tracking gives rise to it, while their expectations continue to be reduced.
The consequence of this PSC and ERC strategy of avoiding confrontation with the former president is that Puigdemont has managed to maintain within sovereignism that status that he attributes to himself as “president in exile.” After Sunday's recount, and with the advantage that his rivals have given him, Puigdemont will take a step forward to underline the message that the Catalonia that comes out of the polls has as its main objective the break with Spain, and, until independence, forcing it to give in to the fiscal pact and the referendum.
The socialists have been moving in the shadows to win over an ERC that will have the key, since it will be the one that can decide whether the Government remains in the hands of the PSC or Junts. The Republicans have a very difficult way out because given their weakness, if the polls are confirmed, investing Illa, even with a tripartite party, leaves them in a very uncomfortable position compared to Junts. The only advantage would be to keep party people “high.”
All parties will try to use their data to make it profitable for the European Championships.
And the pact with Junts seems impossible if we look at the results of the joint government stage and the personal and political war that its main leaders maintain. But with a pro-independence majority, ERC will have a very difficult time proving that it denies its support to a pro-sovereignty government chaired by Puigdemont. This pro-independence majority, with the data available today, could be possible with the votes of the Catalan Alliance, and the gesture of all the parties, except the PP and Ciudadanos, to sign the commitment not to agree with either Vox or the party. of Silvia Orriols has little effect if this formation decides to give its votes to Puigdemont, if he opts for an investiture.
The possibility that the PP can decide whether Illa or the independence movement governs is another option that is on the table, and that, if it comes to fruition, would place Alberto Núñez Feijóo in a complicated position. It has already happened in the governability of the Barcelona city council, but in the case of the Generalitat, Sánchez's pacts with Puigdemont and ERC will be more decisive in the decision adopted by the popular leadership.
For Feijóo, the key to these elections is how his dispute with Vox is resolved. In the Basque elections, it was already considered a disappointment that they did not manage to remove Santiago Abascal's party from Parliament. And Catalonia has an even more important symbolic value in the battle that the PP is waging within the center-right to regroup the vote around its acronym.