Catalan Socialists keep their distance

On Sunday the Catalan Socialist Party (PSC) distanced itself from the ongoing process on the “right to decide,” that is, the right to hold a referendum on independence for Catalonia, as it considers that the conditions it initially demanded have not been complied with. To wit, that the referendum would have to be “legal and agreed upon” in accordance with the 1978 Spanish Constitution — while some, like the radical Catalan Republican Left (ERC), want to hold it even in contravention of the Constitution — and in a manner negotiated with the central government, as in Scotland.

The national council of the PSC voted against the next steps on the agenda: the petition to Congress in Madrid to delegate to the Catalan regional assembly the power to call a referendum; and the new regional law on referendums.

The result of the vote (a secret ballot as demanded by minority factions within the party) of 83 percent in favor of the option backed by PSC leader Pere Navarro was overwhelming. With this, the considerable consensus that had crystallized around the sovereignty process, in spite of some see-sawing, has been officially broken, and the self-rule movement itself seriously weakened. However, this does not mean the end of internal tensions within the PSC.

The chief argument was the refusal to continue with a sequence of moves doomed to failure because of the absence of the Rajoy government’s necessary willingness to initiate negotiations. To require parties that aspire to govern, and make them bang their heads against the wall with no hope of getting through that wall or around it, is not a very good tactical plan. Behind this lies the realization that the manner in which the process has been managed by the Catalan nationalist parties — the center-right CiU and leftist ERC — belies their proclamation that this is to be a clean, legal and consensual referendum.

Their conduct is aimed not at a pact, but at a rejection. This is so because their setting-up of “structures of state” (revenue agencies and others) bereft of functional import prefigures the eventual vote as a referendum “for” independence not “on” it. Far from impartiality, the government of premier Artur Mas is building these mock structures on the presumption of a result favorable to secession. For more than a year procedural impostures have come fast and thick, when in matters affecting the state procedure is essential.

Among them is the ultimatum from Mas to Rajoy on a fiscal pact a year ago: accept it in its entirety as it was formulated, or the CiU would call a referendum. Or the recent trip-up delivered to the PSC itself: when the latter had accepted a vote on a “generic” text on the so-called right to decide, it found itself looking at a different text, which it had not accepted, stipulating a date and a concrete referendum text to be agreed upon before Christmas.

Thus, the Catalan Socialists have distanced themselves from a process which its own promoters know to be doomed to failure. This clears some of the fog from the Catalan landscape. But the government of Mariano Rajoy would do wrong to just let Catalan affairs be. The unity of the different currents of Catalan feeling may break up, but the general public malaise remains very much alive.