Another Fine Mas: After the election

You will recall that photo of President Obama, Hillary Clinton and various other voyeurs in the White House "situation room" watching the last moments of Osama bin Laden. It wasn't quite the same, in that no one actually got topped, but there was a similar gathering of Balearics politico voyeurs to watch the last moments of Artur Mas's political suicide attempt in Catalonia at the weekend. There, in their midst, was Jolly Joe Bauzà in a PP "situation room". Mission accomplished, they would have thought.

Would they have been right to have thought this? A combination of media slur and central government PP insinuations had undermined Mas. Which is what they would have hoped, though whether the accusations about Mas, kickbacks and Swiss bank accounts really had anything to do with the Catalonia election result is very debatable.

Bauzà rejoiced in good Thatcher-recapture-of-South-Georgia style. The Catalonian people have rejected independence, he rejoiced, failing entirely to appreciate that the Catalonian people hadn't rejected independence. What they had done was to suggest that they might quite like independence at some future date but that they didn't necessarily want Artur leading the charge.

No one foresaw what happened at the polling stations on Sunday. It had been forecast Mas's CiU wouldn't get an absolute majority but it had not been forecast that the CiU would lose seats. Or in quite the number that it did. Twelve fewer than it had before the election, Artur and the CiU are in a real pickle.

Mas has said that he will not resign but he should resign. He made a colossal error of judgement. He took the huge pro-independence rally in Barcelona in September as the indication that he could call an election and get a ringing endorsement from all this pro-independence sentiment that would enable him to set the independence ball rolling. His error was in believing that this pro-independence sentiment wanted him to be the ball roller.

What was being overlooked in the run-up to the Catalonia election was the fact that it was an election, not a vote on independence. Granted, independence and a mandate to press for it were the reasons for calling the election, but elections are rarely only concerned with one issue. Artur knew full well that his austerity measures, ones which, in conditions of normal political harmony, would have Mariano Rajoy voicing support for the Catalonians, were not playing terribly well with the Catalan citizenship. The independence gambit was, therefore, his way of seeking to regain popular support. Or so he must have thought. This was his error, however. He, too, forgot that elections are about more than one issue. Or that elections are often about one other issue - it's the economy, stupid. The CiU took an unexpected beating at the polls which should in fact have been expected. Mas committed suicide because he overlooked the small matters of the economy and his austerity measures.

Now he finds himself having to form a coalition with very unlikely bedfellows. There are two main options - the ERC (the Catalan Republican Left) or the PSC (the Catalonian version of the PSOE socialists). The ERC are fervent independentists. The PSC aren't. Like PSOE nationally, they don't approve of separatism. For the right-leaning, conservative Catholic CiU neither option is particularly attractive. Where the economy is concerned, the PSC would probably make greater sense as a coalition partner, but if this is the option Mas were to follow, the independence issue would be dead and buried (for now), thus provoking the obvious question as to why Mas ever bothered raising it.

But the independence issue will not go away. Bauzà is completely wrong in his analysis because not only have the ERC gained significantly, a party that had never previously had parliamentary representation, the anti-capitalist CUP, now has three seats. Mas may have been right about the sentiment for independence, but he most certainly hadn't bargained on the electorate actually voting for parties for whom independence is pretty much their only reason for being.

The belief is that Mas will press ahead towards a referendum with the ERC by his side. If anything, the election will cause a greater entrenching of views. There was just a possibility that Rajoy might have responded by revisiting the Catalonian request for tax-raising powers (the rejection of which kicked off the momentum towards independence), but one feels that this is now impossible. While pro-Spanish unity politicians like the Balearics president might think that mission was accomplished on Sunday, he is very wrong. It was a botched job and one that has made the situation potentially more volatile than it was.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.

Reflections Of Catalonia

Yesterday's article about the Catalonian election was due to have appeared in today's "Daily Bulletin". Or at least, it went forward for inclusion, my having asked, the day before, whether it could be included today. In the absence of a response, I took it, because I wasn't sure, that it could be.

The reason why I had asked is because the day before an election in Spain is a "day of reflection", which means that everyone has to abstain from expressing an opinion, that there can be no campaigning and that the electorate must wander around in contemplative silence, pondering the momentous decision they will make the next day when confronted with the ballot box.

It would be quite nice to think that electorates do indeed enter a twenty-hour period akin to a spiritual retreat, wrestling with no concern other than which sheet of paper they are going to be placing through the box's opening. Will I CiU or will I not CiU? The entire Catalan nation (sic) taking itself on a long and winding walk, seeking spiritual guidance as to which way it should turn. Oh Lord, what on earth am I about to do?

Of course, the electorate is doing no such thing. It has almost certainly already decided and will spend the day of reflection clustered around coffees, beers or tapas in bars from Barcelona to Tarragona and any other place you can think of in Catalonia, telling each other how it (or they) intend to vote, and so either attempting to convince interlocutors to vote in the same way or congratulating interlocutors for sharing their electoral convictions. The day of reflection is a total waste of a day. They may as well just hold the election today and get on with it.

Anyway, and back to yesterday's article or what should be today's article in the "Bulletin", I was duly informed that those who know about these things had decreed that the day of reflection for the election in Catalonia would indeed mean the press in Mallorca also abstaining from offering an opinion and thus potentially influencing all the millions of Catalonians who might not have made up their minds. I had thought that this might be the case, which is why I had asked before submitting the article, and it turned out that I had been right to ask. Consequently, all those millions of Catalonians who might otherwise have been consulting a low-circulation, English-language newspaper, published in Mallorca and containing an article by a Briton that none of them would have ever heard of will now not be able to consult the article.

Except, of course, that they can consult the article, because it's already been published. On the internet. Not that they will be consulting it, as, and for the same reason why they wouldn't be consulting it were it to have been published today in the "Bulletin", it is in English and not Catalan and as it is of no interest to them as Catalonians what I have to say anyway.

Once upon a time, it may have made sense to have a day of reflection - in the days before the internet - but nowadays it makes no sense. Indeed, what are the rules governing the day of reflection and reflections about the election being expressed in cyberspace? Is there a ban on anything being posted today, or how does it work exactly? Is the electorate advised to look away from their computers or phones for 24 hours in case their reflective thoughts are somehow corrupted by what is on the internet? Will there have been a sudden rush of articles, opinions, tweets, posts, blogs at 23.59 before the whole internet world over Catalonia descended into silence at midnight?

It is all a bit daft, as there could be, for all I know, highly respected and highly influential commentators on matters Catalan who live in, let's say London, who will be spending today bombarding Catalonia with recommendations as to how they should vote. My guess is that the day of reflection rules don't actually extend to London or over the border from Spain in Portugal or France. If you really want your voice to be heard today, then you could just nip across the Pyrenees for the day, issue instructions on voting and still be back for Sunday and vote yourself.

Still, rules are rules, even if they are silly rules, and so today there will be no article in the "Bulletin". And because rules are rules, I shall also abstain from issuing my own recommendation as to how to vote. Any Brit who is in Catalonia might be influenced by what I have to say, even if a native Catalan wouldn't be. But then, it wouldn't matter if this Brit in Catalonia were influenced, because he or she wouldn't be able to vote anyway, unless he or she is a Spanish citizen and may be planning to vote in a way that would mean that he or she will cease to be a Spanish citizen.


Any comments to andrew@thealcudiaguide.com please.