True votes

The Catalan parliament has rejected a law tabled by three deputies from the Catalan Solidarity for Independence (SI) party, which attempted to set out the steps toward achieving independence for the region. As well as those who tabled the proposal, the only other votes in favor came from the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) and Joan Laporta, who has formed part of the assembly's mixed group since leaving SI, with which he stood in the regional elections. The Catalan Socialist Party (PSC), the Popular Party and Citizens of Catalunya voted against the proposal, while Convergence and Union (CiU) opted to abstain, along with Initiative for Catalonia Greens (ICV).

The aim of SI was to make the most of the climate created by the unofficial referendums carried out on Sunday in Barcelona and other Catalan municipalities over independence, and transfer it to the parliament. But instead it has had the opposite effect: the legitimate representatives of Catalonia have made clear that staging a piece of street theater ? complete with polling stations and voting papers ? to represent a referendum is one thing, but trying to get a vote passed within Catalan institutions is something else altogether. After the rejection of the law on Wednesday, continuing with the unofficial polls that have been held over the last few months would be the equivalent of putting such spectacles above the real tasks that the Catalan parliament has pending.

The position of the pro-independence deputies has been clear, as has that of the parties who rejected the law. This is not so for CiU, however. The majority party, which adopted a key role in the unofficial polls, opted for the ambiguity implicit in abstention. The premier of the region, Artur Mas, actually chose to make his excuses and duck out of the vote altogether. This reveals that the strategy that has guided the approach of CiU is a contradictory one, given that the party has been quite happy to whip up passions on the streets about Catalan independence, only to calm these passions within the institutions. Not only is this well beneath the responsibility that CiU holds, but it is also a dangerous game, the aim of which is to keep the independence movement in perpetual movement, so that it dominates the Catalan political scene.

The tortuous path toward approval taken by the past decade's Catalan autonomy prompted an unquestionable unease among Catalans, who were promised the impossible only to be immediately reproached for believing it could happen. It is up to the political leaders and the heads of the Catalan institutions to decide what to do with that unease ? which they were also responsible for creating, as much as they might like to plead innocence. If the regional premier and CiU are not prepared to defend in parliament what they said on the streets during the polling, it is because they either don't know what they want, or are afraid to admit it. They are not going to please anyone with this approach.

If it were in opposition, CiU would risk a political beating. But in the position it is in at the moment, heading up the region, it is discrediting the self-government that it is so keen to defend.