Catalan Socialists Learn from Their Mistakes

Catalonia’s Socialists?missed an opportunity ?after the last election to split up the region’s left- and right-wing independence parties. The moderate Republican Left, which supports a Socialist government nationally, had tired of the hardliners in Together for Catalonia (Junts), but local Socialist Party leader Salvador Illa wouldn’t accept anything short of the presidency for himself.

“Why should I invest a person that I defeated at the polls?” he remarked of the Republican party leader, Pere Aragonès.

Illa won 50,000 more votes than the Republicans, but both parties got 33 out of 135 seats. Aragonès claimed the presidency too, but he had two paths to a majority, not one. Illa’s intransigence drove the Republicans into the arms of?Junts.

But the coalition proved short-lived and Illa has recently set his ego aside.

Aragonès got off to a bad start

Knowing the Republicans had to choose between giving up the presidency or accepting their terms,?Junts?drove a hard bargain. Whereas the Republicans wanted to give talks with Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez about devolving more powers to Catalonia a chance,?Junts?insisted on taking steps toward secession. That poisoned the atmosphere in Aragonès’ coalition from the start.

In a compromise, the parties agreed to call a second unilateral referendum on independence (the first was forbidden by Spain and boycotted by unionists) in case the talks with Sánchez failed.

Sánchez pardoned the separatists who were imprisoned for organizing the first referendum.

He reneged on a promise to?fund more Catalan-language film and TV , and he blocked a congressional inquiry into the revelation that 65 prominent Catalans, including President Aragonès,?had been phone-tapped by Spain’s national security agency.

Few powers were devolved. Catalans have for years asked for control over housing policy, labor law and maritime rescue. They are jealous of the Basques’ fiscal autonomy. The Basques raise their own taxes and send a share to Madrid. In Catalonia, the national government collects most taxes. The regional government must ask for its share “back” every year.

Sánchez gave Catalonia the right to award university scholarships.

“Will to move forward”

Even Aragonès had to admit the talks with Sánchez achieved little. But he refused to pull out, and agree to another referendum attempt, so long as “both parties have the will to move forward.”

It’s doubtful Sánchez will muster that will before the general election in December. Other institutions in Spain never had any. The Supreme Court invented a rule that Catalan schools must teach at least one in four classes in Castilian (Spanish). The Constitutional Court overturned a Catalan rent-control law.

Education and housing are two areas where regional and national competencies overlap. The point of the negotiations was to hash out such ambiguities, but they haven’t.

By October of last year,?Junts?had had enough and quit. That gave Illa a chance to correct his mistake from two years ago.

Socialists get a taste for dealmaking

Aragonès needed a majority for his 2023 budget, which?Junts?was no longer willing to provide. The Socialists came to the rescue, conditioning their support on concessions that were palatable to the Republican Left: more money for Barcelona’s El Prat airport and regional trains, and a new highway.

That gave the Socialists a taste for coalition building…

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