Competition for leadership of the independence and unionist movements will lead to ramped up rhetoric and old wounds inflamed

The Spanish prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, called elections in Catalonia in order to squash the wealthy region’s troublesome independence movement, but instead discovered he was incapable of taming it.



The results from Thursday’s vote are disastrous for Rajoy and his conservative government, but are also a headache for those who now have to form a Catalan regional government. Just as in 2015, most Catalans voted against the independence parties, but these still won a majority in parliament – with the balance of power now in the hands of the most radical separatists.

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Rather than heal wounds, this split will inflame them. Neither side looks likely to back down, and both Catalonia and Spain will suffer as a result.

Carles Puigdemont, the outgoing prime minister who fled to Belgium after leading the regional parliament to a declaration of independence in October, may now be reappointed. He would run the strangest regional government Spain has ever seen.

It is not clear, for example, whether he will return to Catalonia, where an investigating magistrate is waiting to arrest him on charges of sedition and misuse of public funds. He may choose, instead, to become a symbolic leader in exile.

Both the number two in Puigdemont’s new Together for Catalonia coalition (JxC), Jordi Sànchez, and the leader of their allied Catalan Republican Left party, Oriol Junqueras, are currently in jail and under investigation on the same charges.

Puigdemont’s first demand on Thursday was for them to be released, but that is up to the courts, not the government. The sight of deputies such as Junqueras being ferried backwards and forwards in police vans to the Catalan parliament in Barcelona cannot be ruled out.

Competition between the parties of Puigdemont and Junqueras for leadership of the independence movement, meanwhile, will force them to ramp up the rhetoric of confrontation. Although a coalition government led by the two men is the most likely outcome, this cannot be formed without the anti-capitalist, pro-civil disobedience Popular Unity Candidacy, whose four deputies hold the balance of power. They want a full showdown with Madrid.

A return by the separatists to the so-called “route map” by which they unilaterally declared an insubstantial form of independence in October would lead to them crashing straight back into the concrete wall of Spain’s constitution and its cast-iron defender, Rajoy.

The latter showed on 1 October, when police beat their way into voting stations to snatch away urns during an illegal referendum organised by Puigdemont’s government, that he was willing to use the violence of the state.

Friday’s decision by the supreme court to widen its investigation into attempted sedition, naming other parliamentarians elected on Thursday as suspects, shows there will be no let-up from the courts either.

With support from the EU glaringly absent and nobody recognising a Catalan right to self-determination, Puigdemont and Junqueras will struggle to find ways to advance their independence project.

Before they can do that, however, separatists have other battles to fight. The October independence declaration led to the imposition of direct rule by Madrid. Rajoy will not change that until a new Catalan government is formed, and will reimpose it if that government steps outside the constitution.

The separatists will fight to have Junqueras, Sànchez and others released on bail and to prevent them from being sent back to jail after trial. There are already calls for an amnesty.

Rajoy’s standing in Catalonia, meanwhile, could not be lower. Only 4% of Catalans voted for his People’s party (PP), which will have just three deputies in the 135-seat regional parliament. That contrasts with the quarter of the vote won by Citizens, a liberal rival that was born in Catalonia and is as firm in its opposition to separatism as the PP.

Citizens is a threat to Rajoy elsewhere in Spain, and the competition to prove who is tougher on separatism may lead to the rhetoric of unionism becoming more heated.

That leaves the two sides even more at loggerheads than they were three months ago, before the current crisis exploded.

More worrying for Catalans, however, is the deep rift opening up in their own society as extreme positions win out over moderation. Healing that wound may prove the biggest challenge of all.

In the meantime, Catalans need a government to run their schools, hospitals and police force. Neither Rajoy’s rock-like obstinacy, nor Puigdemont’s efforts to bring about independence despite the majority who oppose it, will help improve their lives in the short-term.