It’s a rainy Monday morning my colleagues are on vacation, so I’m having a slow day. I’ve sort of decided that I’ll try to write here more often, maybe once a week. I’ll probably focus on Catalan and Spanish politics but I’d like to do some TV/movie/podcast/book recommendations too. Bear with me while I try to find the right balance.
The Pedro Sánchez Gambit
I started writing this at about 10:00 and later remembered that I already wrote about Pedro Sánchez last year, and I don’t want this to turn into a Pedro Sánchez newsletter. He gets enough attention already. My favourite Spanish politics meme made a welcome comeback today (not that it ever really goes away):
All the Pedro Sánchez drama seems to be at least in part aimed at guaranteeing that Salvador Illa becomes the next president of Catalonia, ending a decade of pro-independence leadership. Illa is not a candidate who inspires much of anything. His whole selling point is basically not having a personality, as Blackadder had it:
“Well, we in the Adder Party are going to fight this campaign on issues, not personalities.” “Why is that?” “Because our candidate doesn't have a personality.”
And because, as Vicent Partal correctly observes, PSC voters don’t really vote in terms of Catalonia: “they vote with their heads in Madrid”, the best way that Sánchez can help Illa is with a huge political pantomime in Madrid. It’s this aspect of the Sánchez gambit which makes it all so clever. But despite the show, there’s still no guarantee that Illa will be the next presi.
Elections in Catalonia #VotaCUP
I think I mentioned previously that I’m a member of the CUP (Popular Unity Candidacy). Joining and taking part in a political party has been a hugely positive step for me - organising with like-minded comrades is something that was missing from my life. I’ll try to talk about this more in future but, as with any political activist, I’m naturally bound by the fact that anything I know that’s even halfway juicy, can’t be written about. And I don’t think anyone’s going to be waiting for the political memoir of an Englishman who joined the CUP in his 40s.
Being a party member means getting involved in the day-to-day work of the campaign, even at local level. I had to attend a boring but important meeting with the representatives of other parties to make a deal on where each party can place its plafons or banderoles, and we hosted a Sunday morning vermut with one of our MPs. No door-knocking here - it’s not the done thing - so our focus has to be to try to maintain our presence in the local press. And putting up our plafons. Here’s a plafon:
There’s no question that as a party, we were caught on the backfoot by the announcement of these elections. The CUP was in the middle of a process of rethinking our strategy, around the main pillars of our ideological position: that we want to build a socialist, feminist and ecologist society in the Catalan-speaking countries. This unfinished process of debate was meant to prepare us for the next elections, but instead we’re running a campaign with some core questions still left unanswered. So the conditions are not ideal, but we’ll do our best.
If you’re as addicted to polls as I am, the best place to follow polling for these elections is probably the Betevé site.
The rise of the Catalan far-right
If last year’s Spanish elections seemed to threaten a real possibility of Vox governing, this year’s Catalan elections raise the outside chance of parliamentary seats going to far-right Catalan nationalists, Aliança Catalana. AC and their ghoulish leader Sílvia Orriols govern in the northern town of Ripoll, where they won 30% of the vote in 2023’s municipal elections (the Junts vote collapsed), and then managed to exploit divisions between the 3 main pro-independence parties to secure the town hall.
Aliança Catalana’s public positions are a blend of Catalan independence and anti-immigration rhetoric which is totally at odds with the mainstream pro-independence narrative of the last decade or so.
While there have always been some very reactionary components in the broad pro-independence coalition, it was unquestionably a socially progressive movement. However, as I’ve said in the past, some independence supporters have made the mistake of thinking that independence itself is an ideological position, when it’s obviously not. As that coalition has crumbled, its ideological paucity has become much more pronounced. People have shifted from “Left or right, I don’t care: independence” to “Independence to take control of our borders” with great ease. It shouldn’t surprise us that individuals without any kind of class analysis are much more likely to slip into the embrace of reaction at the first whiff of disappointment, and Catalonia is no different in that sense.
AC has been heavily promoted by the right wing press in Catalonia and Spain as a whole. The usual elite groups are keen to support any party which turns us against ourselves, especially one which can smear the entire Catalan independence movement. I predict them not to win any seats on the 12th of May.
Recommendations
Last week we celebrated Sant Jordi with books and roses. Gemma got me 10 myths about Israel by Ilan Pappé (translated into Catalan by Lola Fígols Fornell). It’s a good primer on how Israel has been carrying out a genocide against the Palestinians over the last 76 years. I’ve also been reading Parenti’s Blackshirts & Reds and The Secret World by Christopher Andrew.
I’ve been listening to a lot of Fetus, a left-wing Catalan punk band which I got into a couple of years ago. Their music blends punk with elements of folk and rock (which I guess really began in Basque bands in the 80s), and features poetic and polemical political lyrics about historic revolts, and the state of things today.
And this wonderful song - Balansiya, by Xavi Sarrià, La Maria, Noèlia Titana, Xiomara Abello, Rafel Arnel and Pep Gimeno “Botifarra” - celebrating Valencian language, culture and tradition in the face of an onslaught by the autonomous PP & Vox government.
Favourite podcasts at the moment: Bad Gays, True Anon, Cursed Objects.
I’m sorry that this has gone on for so long. Massa text. See you soon.