BY DICK NICHOLS
The biggest loser in the November 13 Catalan regional election was the Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSC), the Catalan sister organisation of the social-democratic Socialist Workers Party of Spain (PSOE).
For two decades, the PSC has been biting at the heels of Convergence and Union (CiU), the corrupt, right-wing nationalist machine that has governed Catalonia since the fall of the Franco dictatorship in the late 1970s. Yet a tired and policy-free PSC failed to convert disillusionment with the CiU regime into votes for itself.
Instead, in the increasingly polarised and differentiated society that is Catalonia today, the PSC lost 160,000 votes â to Catalan nationalists and to the left.
The demagogic nationalist Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) was the biggest winner. Besides picking up disillusioned PSC voters, it also sliced support off the CiU, especially in rural areas, as well as picking up the nationalist vote among first-time voters.
The second biggest winner was Initiative for Catalonia-Greens (ICV), which, in alliance with the United and Alternative Left (EUiA), nearly trebled its vote. A strong turnout among young workers and students â who have been the backbone of the powerful anti-war and anti-globalisation movement in Catalonia â favoured the ICV-EUiA.
That the CiU still managed to win the biggest vote of all parties was testimony to the tenacity of the country's ancien regime. Despite the retirement of its cunning godfather-president Jordi Pujol, the CiU machine used its outrageous rural gerrymander, gross pork-barrelling and old-fashioned red-baiting to scare and seduce most of its electorate into sticking with the horse they knew.
It is now likely that the CiU will continue to govern Catalonia, if in an alliance that is yet to be determined. What does seem excluded is the realisation of the PSC proposal for a repeat at the national level of the ruling "left" alliance in Barcelona â between the PSC, ERC and ICV. The ERC is insisting on an alliance between itself, the CiU and the PSC on the basis of an agreement to renegotiate Catalonia's statute of autonomy with the Spanish state.
Two factors are driving ERC leader Josep Llu¡s Carod-Rovira along this path. The first is the pressure from the ERC right-wing in the countryside, which is xenophobic, socially reactionary and often anti-working class. The second is the fear that the weight of nationalism would be diluted in an alliance with the PSC and the ICV.
The rise in the vote for the People's Party (PP), the ruling party in Spain, confirms its success in presenting itself as the "champion of the Spanish constitution" against rising national sentiment in Catalonia. The result will confirm the PP in its decision to make the "war on nationalisms" the centre of its campaign in the 2004 Spanish elections, a variation of the "war on terrorism".
The bright spot in the election was the strengthening of a left vote around the ICV-EUiA. This formation, which unites people who in Australia would be in the Greens, the Socialist Alliance and the orthodox communist party, is placed to pick up even more support if the ERC decides to betray its left wing and salvage the CiU regime.
The ICV-EUiA also has the potential to strengthen the social movements, providing it develops a strategic focus to that end. That will require a vigourous debate inside this very heterogeneous party, but one that is unavoidable if the potential to build the movements is to be fulfilled.
[Dick Nichols is a member of the Socialist Alliance. He recently returned from an extended stay in Spain.]
From Green Left Weekly, December 3, 2003.
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