The campaign for the Catalan elections ends with the risk of blockade

Someone will have to give in.

The elections this Sunday in Catalonia were called to answer some key questions.

Among them are knowing the level of support that the independence movement has after the most intense moment of the

procés

and

the validation of the ways that the secessionist forces propose to achieve it;

the change in the map of political hegemony and the reorganization of the space of the right.

The forcefulness of the responses is given by the scenario suggested by the polls and the veto of the independentistas to the PSC to form a government.

From the outset, it is unlikely that the constitutionalist forces will join in and now they will face the irruption of Vox.

Junts and ERC can repeat an agreement in the Government, although they do not clarify how to renew a formula that has already certified its wear and tear this legislature, marked by the confrontation between partners.

The CUP also has many possibilities to arbitrate the route of this new Executive, something to which PDeCAT also aspires.

The electoral repetition, in the event of a blockade, would lengthen the provisional status at a key moment for the recovery after the pandemic.

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The pro-independence future.

On January 29, 2020, then-

president

Quim Torra announced the end of the turbulent pact with ERC.

There would be a new electoral advance after the Budgets were approved, extended from 2017. Junts responded in this way to the fact that the president of Parliament, Roger Torrent, of ERC, obeyed the justice and removed the act of deputy to Torra despite the fact that his The conviction for disobedience was not yet final.

Esquerra proved that he would not go down the path of "sterile" disobedience.

The coronavirus blew everything up.

The management of the pandemic further soured the relationship between the partners and Torra used the situation to tighten the rope with the Government of Pedro Sánchez.

Junts and ERC, almost from the first plenary session of the legislature, were already engaged in an all-out confrontation.

After the fall of 2017, the Republicans enlightened a change in strategy, putting aside the unilateralism defended until then.

Now the social base of secessionism had to be increased;

be key in Congress to be able to force the referendum and, finally, that good management was the proof that you can manage your own future state.

Junts believes that this route renounces "the mandate of the 1-O referendum."

To defend it, he opts for confrontation with the state.

From the proposal to reactivate the Unilateral Declaration of Independence if half of the votes were exceeded, it is now established, according to his program, that the republic proclaim itself when "we are ready."

Both formations understand that the polls will give a verdict on which strategy has the most support.

Competition is also in political hegemony.

After years of

sociovergent

power

, ERC was the most voted force in the last municipal elections.

It even won in votes in Barcelona, ​​but the support of Manuel Valls allowed Ada Colau to continue as mayor.

Junts had no qualms about supporting the PSC, “los del 155”, in the Barcelona Provincial Council and thus shielding local power from the advance of ERC.

A possible pact with the Socialists, —which both Salvador Illa himself and the Junts and ERC candidates, Laura Borràs and Pere Aragonès, have repeatedly denied— was the main weapon of the campaign.

The votes or abstention of the PSC and the

commons

were the only way, according to the polls, to add 68 deputies out of 135 and allow ERC to turn the page with its partners.

When Illa started leading the race, the roles were switched.

Despite the refusals of Aragonès and theirs to the pact, the numerical possibility was still there.

A small and unknown entity in favor of the secession, Catalans per la Independència, managed to get the pro-cession parties to leave in writing the veto of an Executive with the PSC.

The independence movement managed to shield its stay in the Generalitat.

It is possible that whoever wins tomorrow will do so for the minimum.

Even those who win in votes may not win in seats.

Junts and ERC will have it very difficult to claim the medal of leadership in their block without being questioned by the other.

Pandemic fight.

Despite the distance between Junts and ERC, the independence movement has a history of reaching agreements in the second discount.

Now there is extra pressure.

The response to the pandemic but above all to advance in the social and economic recovery are fighting more temporarily.

It is very difficult for citizens to digest an electoral repetition and it would be more so in this context.

The coronavirus crisis has been a campaign weapon.

Illa's former Minister of Health status was a great platform but also the target of criticism for his management.

Aragonès, as

acting

president

and leader of the party in the hands of the most questioned portfolios (Health and Social Affairs), also received many reproaches.

Junts behaved more as an opposition than as a partner and charged against what was done by their government allies.

Illa and Aragonès were criticized on many occasions for considering that their balance sheets were “triumphalist”.

Proposals for recovery have gone largely unnoticed.

The hopes of all are placed on the funds that will come from Europe and for their good management it is necessary not only a strong Government but also a good cooperation between Administrations.

The crisis finally showed the consequences of the Convergència cuts in the Catalan health system.

His urgent reform was overshadowed by attention to the pandemic.

The attacks were not limited to management.

The campaign went down in the mud with the incident of the covid-19 test that Illa refused to do.

The TV3 workers asked, before the debate, that the candidates take a test to minimize the risk.

The socialist was the only one who did not follow the recommendation and said that it goes against the protocols that he himself approved.

The criticisms ranged from his lack of sensitivity to employee concerns to directly accusing him of having secretly vaccinated.

He denies it and the Ministry of Health also.

The irruption of the Illa effect.

The landing of the former minister turned the campaign upside down.

The PSC went from being stagnant to having a "prospect of victory", as proclaimed by socialist leaders.

The current scenario is a triple tie with Junts and ERC.

Illa's candidacy has taken center stage since its announcement on December 30.

Already in the campaign, the attacks by the rest of the forces created a scenario of "all against Illa" that reinforced the mobilization of its voters and the undecided.

Illa raised a presidential campaign, with the force idea of ​​"turning the page" of the

procés

.

Its main victim has been Citizens: the socialists have underpinned the decline of those of Inés Arrimadas with the repeated message that Illa "returns" to Catalonia and with the promise that she will stand for the investiture if she wins.

Arrimadas took no chances in 2017.

The PSC, which now has 17 deputies, hopes to be the party with the most votes and the one that will grow the most in terms of votes, percentage and seats, sources from the leadership point out.

The veto of the pro-independence parties, these voices believe, gives it a final boost since it deactivates the discourse of its rivals in constitutionalism that it will agree with the Republicans.

The ghost of the

tripartite

, the Catalan Executive made up of PSC, ERC and Initiative in 2003 and which allowed Pasqual Maragall to put an end to the convergent hegemony, has been very present in the campaign.

From the PP to Junts they see it as an attack on efficient management.

Without ERC and commons, Illa cannot be

president

.

Vox is not an option “neither by active, nor by passive, nor by periphrastic”, affirmed the candidate in the TV3 debate.

The decline of Ciudadanos.

The orange formation closes the campaign with the fear that the 14-F will suppose a replica of the earthquake of the general elections of 2019. According to the latest polls, it is fighting for fourth place with Vox and

commons

, and may fall from its 36 seats current to a third.

In Catalonia, the leadership took for granted a "correction" of the victory of 2017, because then it received a lot of votes borrowed from the fear of unilateral independence.

But if the latest polls are fulfilled, they will also suffer a punishment, far from the 25 deputies who achieved in 2015 before the effervescence of the

procés

.

Many voices in the party point out that the problem has been in a "badly planned and badly done" campaign and in which some posters even had to be removed due to copyright problems.

The early offer of candidate Carlos Carrizosa to Illa to form a joint government sent the message to his voters that the meaning of their vote did not matter.

Vox also snatched the flag of anti-independence from them.

The

sorpasso

of Vox.

The PP knows that this Sunday, except for a miracle, it will be surpassed by Vox in Catalonia.

Their internal studies and those of rivals say so.

The stage is assumed in the direction.

The end is difficult for a candidate, Alejandro Fernández, who has performed well in the debates and who began the campaign with expectations of doubling the current four seats.

The starting point was already the worst result in the history of the game, but Fernández ends the race to the polls with the question of whether he will keep all four seats.

The confession of Luis Bárcenas and the irruption of the extreme right, they explain from the party, have dynamited everything

Vox has been the main workhorse of the PP.

Those of Santiago Abascal managed to stand out thanks to the violent incidents they suffered in their actions.

The popular ones were forced to go on the attack.

Fernández used himself thoroughly in the debates against Ignacio Garriga, Vox's candidate, to try to stop his advance by dismantling his “populist” discourse.

The leader of the PP, Pablo Casado, also intervened with a demarcation of the action of the Government of Mariano Rajoy on October 1, 2017.

The question is what will happen the day after.

The PP will continue to have a problem in Catalonia, and the first elections after the motion of censure benefit Vox.

Married has spent days preparing the ground internally for the

sorpasso

.

He takes refuge in the fact that no one asked Sánchez to account for the triumphs of Podemos.

The result, he argues, cannot be extrapolated at the national level.

Fernández has the approval of the national leadership to lead the popular "reconstruction" in Catalonia.

Vote in pandemic.

In the PP, as in the more traditional parties, the effect of voting in the midst of the pandemic is of concern.

The fear of contagion scares away the older layers of the population, who are not very given to using postal voting and who tend to support these large formations.

The question of participation and last-minute voting decisions (37% undecided according to the average forecast of the polls) will be key in the result.

The 14-F appointment started with the judicial uncertainty of whether it could be carried out.

The Government and all the parties except the PSC wanted a postponement to avoid the peak of the third wave of the pandemic.

That new call ended in court, which finally discarded it.

The Generalitat defends that the operation, which includes suggesting covid-19 patients and their contacts to vote late in the afternoon, is safe.

Despite this, one in four people summoned summoned to be at the tables presented allegations to the electoral authorities to avoid attending.

In the unlikely event that many polling stations cannot be constituted and that implies a volume of votes that alters the results, the Electoral Board may request that the counting information be withheld until Tuesday.

The Generalitat insists that there are contingency plans to avoid this assumption and they see positive that for the moment no party questions the legitimacy of the process.

In the last elections, participation, boosted by the political situation, reached a record of 79%.

The minimum, in 1992, was 54%.