Seeking a miracle in the metropolitan area

BarcelonaThe official version is that, in the face of adverse polls, Miquel Iceta convinced Pedro Sánchez that the best thing for the Catalan Socialist Party (PSC) was to entrust itself to the Minister of Health and his image as a reliable man in the face of the worst health crisis in a century. The reality is, however, that this change had been in preparation for some time and all that was needed was to find the right moment. From this point of view, Iceta, an old hand, saw it coming and jumped before he was pushed.

If we pay close attention, we will see that the immediate goal is to look for a game-changer that mobilises the vote in the metropolitan area which went to Ciudadanos in the last election, and hope for a miracle that allows them to come first in the February elections. But in the long term, the march of Iceta has much more transcendental consequences, and they go beyond a particular juncture. With Salvador Illa comes what we could define as the post-independence bid PSC, captained by unapologetically Spanish cadres who, moreover, have incubated in recent years a strong resentment towards the independence movement, which they accuse of having driven the country to the brink.

People like Eva Granados or Meritxell Batet, and the hard core of Illa with José Luis Gimeno, Joaquín Fernández, Víctor Francos or Jonatan Martínez have nothing to do with the group that, at the beginning of the last decade, seemed ready to replace the old PSC by embracing self-determination, formed by Laia Bonet, Rocío Martínez-Sampere, Francesc Vallès or Jaume Collboni. Their alignment with Sánchez makes them more more akin to a José Zaragoza-like confrontation than to the conciliatory spirit of José Montilla or Iceta himself.

Alternative to independence

This new PSC considers that after the independence bid they have to be the axis of Unionism and an alternative to independence. Illa will probably manage to recover a significant part of this vote (as Iceta was already doing, in fact), and this may be good news for the cohesion of the country and Catalanism (in the event that we consider that this concept is still in force). But beware, because the PSC is not Ciudadanos, a party that had one million votes but no territorial structure worthy of the name, nor an equivalent social presence. The PSC is a formidable machinery of power, although limited to metropolitan areas, and it has dozens of cadres and people with experience in Madrid and Brussels. Obviously it is not Pasqual Maragall's PSC, but right now the only party machine capable of facing up to it, once the remains of CiU have been dismantled, is ERC.

Salvador Illa knows that, even if he wins, it will be very difficult for him to be the next president because no coalition can be achieved without the support of pro-independence parties. But he can set himself up as what ex-Ciudadanos leader in Catalonia Inés Arrimadas did not want to be: the alternative to a form of independence that is immersed in a thousand internal wars and has an essentialist component that generates rejection in part of the society it aims to seduce.

What is coming, then, is a PSC more aligned with the PSOE than ever and less left-wing than Iceta's. A PSC that would never think of doing what Pere Navarro ordered on 30 October 2013 in the Spanish Parliament: going against the party whip in order to defend Catalans' right to self-determination.