Catalonia’s separatists score another victory, but a hollow one

CATALANS PRIDE themselves on their , their hard-headed common sense. Yet when it comes to politics, as Jaume Vicens Vives, a great Catalan historian of the mid-20th century, pointed out, they have more often acted with its opposite: , or emotional impulsiveness. In the run-up to an election for the regional government on February 14th, many expected that practical matters such as the pandemic and the economic slump would be uppermost in Catalan minds. But the wounds of October 2017, when an unconstitutional referendum on independence for one’s of Spain’s most important regions led to the jailing of nine separatist leaders, are still raw. The Catalan authorities let the prisoners out on day release so that they could campaign. Once again, the emotional divide over independence dominated the election.The separatist parties won 74 seats, increasing their slender majority in the 135-strong Catalan parliament by four. For the first time since launching their independence drive in 2012 they won a majority of the popular vote, with a total of 51%. But the import of that was blunted by a record low turnout of under 54% (down from 79% at the previous election, in 2017), depressed by the pandemic and political disaffection. The nationalist vote, meanwhile, was split among four parties with very different strategies. This allowed the Catalan affiliate of the Socialist Party of Pedro Sánchez, Spain’s prime minister, to win more votes than any other party, even though it took only 23%. For him it was a useful, if limited, victory.