Fugitive Catalan leader holds key to Spanish electoral impasse
A Catalan independence leader on the run from Spanish justice could hold the key to unlocking a political impasse after Sunday’s election ended in a hung parliament.
Former Catalan regional government head Carles Puigdemont, who lives in self-imposed exile in Belgium since leading a failed push to split Catalonia from Spain in 2017, unexpectedly finds himself a potential kingmaker after no bloc on the left or right won enough seats to form a majority, Reuters reported.
One path out of the labyrinth would be for Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez to secure a vote in favour, or at least an abstention, in a parliamentary vote on forming a government from Puigdemont’s Junts party in exchange for further concessions on independence.
The centre-right People’s Party (PP) and the far-right Vox won the most seats in parliament with a combined 169 - short of the 176 seats needed for a majority and confounding poll predictions.
The ruling Socialists (PSOE) and far-left Sumar won 153 but have more possibilities for negotiating support from small Basque and Catalan separatist parties, as they did following 2019’s election.
Sanchez could win over left-wing separatist party Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC). But he will likely also need the backing of the more hardline Junts, which has not supported Sanchez in the past four years.
Junts Secretary General Jordi Turull said on Monday he would use the “window of opportunity” created by the election impasse to achieve Catalan independence.
“The state knows that if it wants to negotiate with us, there are two issues that are fundamental and generate consensus in Catalonia which are an amnesty and self-determination,” he said in an interview with local radio station RAC 1.
Turull was among the nine Catalan jailed separatist leaders pardoned by Sanchez in 2021 for their role in the 2017 independence bid. However, many more are still facing trial, chief amongst them Puigdemont.
Puigdemont, who still wields considerable influence within Junts, said in mid-July the party would not support Sanchez because he was unreliable. Early on Monday he tweeted that Junts is a party that keeps its word.
Puigdemont was stripped of the immunity he had as a member of the European Parliament earlier this month, paving the way for his extradition, as Spanish authorities have requested for the past six years.
The Catalans are likely to play hardball in any negotiations after the election laid bare that a rapprochement with Madrid has not worked in their favour, said Joan Esculies, a writer and analyst on Catalan politics.