The nine fractures of the same 'procés': from 9-N 2014 to 9-N of the investiture of Pedro Sánchez

Whether it was the result of chance or the independence movement's obsession with collecting iconic dates, the pact signed yesterday between the PSOE and Junts for the investiture of Pedro Sánchez coincided with the ninth anniversary of the first sovereignty consultation in Catalonia, the one held on November 9 of 2014.

It is precisely the period marked by these two moments that the future amnesty law agreed between socialists and independentists wants to cover: from the preparations for 9-N with which the process began to the most recent judicial cases, related mostly to the second vote. illegal organized by the Generalitat (the 1-O referendum) or the protests against the 2019 Supreme Court ruling.

Knowing the importance that the emotional component has had as a driving force in Catalan politics in recent years, the post-convergent leaders did not overlook the anniversary.. Both the reborn Carles Puigdemont and the general secretary, Jordi Turull, referred yesterday to the “path of no return started in 2014.”

2014: the first disobedience of the 'procés'

After the regional elections of 2012, which Artur Mas anticipated under the pretext that the Mariano Rajoy Government's rejection of the “fiscal pact” dynamited any understanding with the State, Convergència i Unió activated the path towards a sovereignty vote, which served to deactivate Esquerra Republicana, the second parliamentary force, as the opposition. At the end of that year, both parties signed the Agreement for the national transition and to guarantee the stability of the Government, a document that laid the foundations for the holding of the popular consultation on the independence of Catalonia in 2014.

2015: Artur Mas's 'trap plebiscite'

These were times of worst press for the CiU brand, suffering from several cases of corruption, social cuts implemented by the Government and Jordi Pujol's shocking confession, in 2014, about the family fortune hidden in Andorra.. Looking with fear in the rearview mirror at the electoral growth of ERC in the polls and the threat that a candidacy arising from the 15-M movement could pose (Ada Colau became mayor of Barcelona in May of that year), Mas once again advanced the catalan elections. And he did it with one of his proclaimed “cunning”: an election that he baptized as “plebiscitary” and in which he again annulled ERC with the creation of the joint list Junts pel Sí. The independence candidacy in which the convergent leader camouflaged himself as theorist number four (thereby avoiding accountability in electoral debates) obtained a bitter victory, since he was left six seats short of the absolute majority and gave up nine deputies compared to those who added CiU and ERC in 2012. The 10 CUP parliamentarians became key actors in the process and Mas declared the plebiscite won, despite the fact that the three pro-independence parties did not reach 48% of the votes.

2016: Puigdemont, from anonymity to key figure

It was this new predominant role of the CUP that caused a first change of course in the sovereignty process, with its refusal to invest Mas. The anti-capitalists were able to collect a piece of big game, that of the leader of CiU, without being accused of putting spokes in the wheels on the road to secession. They facilitated the arrival to the presidency of the Generalitat of someone with more pro-independence pedigree, the then mayor of Gerona, Carles Puigdemont, unknown outside of Catalonia, but who would be the one to press the accelerator in that first change of course.. His proclaimed “yes or yes referendum” materialized a year later on 1-O and his decision not to call early elections afterwards changed the course of Catalan and Spanish politics until yesterday, when that anonymous Girona councilor He showed himself as the person with decision-making power over who will be the next president of the Government and, most importantly, the future of the legislature.

2017: Catalan October

A summer marked by the terrorist attack of 17-A was followed by a dizzying start to the political year, with the disconnection laws in Parliament (September 6 and 7), the demonstration in front of the Department of Economy during the Guard searches Civil of 20-S, the illegal consultation of October 1, the DUI and article 155 of the Constitution, with the flight of Puigdemont and several of his advisors to Belgium. At the end of that year, Ciudadanos won the regional elections called by Rajoy. The first non-Catalan party that managed to prevail in regional elections, however, lacked sufficient support to challenge the independence movement for the majority, which half a year later would form a Government chaired by Quim Torra.. Vicar of Puigdemont, his mandate ended abruptly in 2020 when he was disqualified by Justice for not having removed, during the electoral period, a banner supporting the prisoners of the Palau de la Generalitat process.

2018: the independence movement promotes change, Rajoy for Sánchez

The participation of the secessionist forces, with the vote of the nine deputies of Esquerra and the eight of the PDeCAT, was already key the first time that Sánchez arrived at La Moncloa, after the motion of censure against Rajoy. The PNV, which nine days earlier had voted in favor of the General State Budgets designed by the PP, ended up attacking the popular leader. The post-convergent party's yes vote, however, did not have the approval of Puigdemont, who ended up purging Marta Pascal, the general coordinator.

2019: the Supreme Court ruling

In February of that year, the trial of the leaders of the process began in the Supreme Court.. Outside the courts, politics continued to show signs of fragility. The independence movement did not support Sánchez for his Budget and the president concluded the legislature. After a first fruitless victory at the polls, the November electoral repetition took place a few weeks after the ruling of the TS, which sentenced nine of the twelve accused to prison for the crimes of sedition and embezzlement.

2020-2021: ERC takes on the old role of CiU

ERC allowed Sánchez's investiture and the agreed dialogue table was inaugurated with pomp in February. The state of alarm due to the covid pandemic in March upended everything that had occupied political interest in previous years. Even so, during the parenthesis, the Republicans advanced on the path that Mas had blocked, that of growing to occupy the place that CiU had left as the central force of Catalan nationalism.. In addition to his influence in Madrid with 13 deputies, Pere Aragonès became president of the pro-independence coalition Government by surpassing JxCat, tying in seats with the PSC, the most voted force in the February 2021 elections.

2022: the exhausted unit of Junts and ERC

The disagreements between republicans and post-convergents were increasingly undisguised. ERC distanced itself from the ANC Day demonstration and Junts questioned the governability pact day in and day out. The coalition shattered in October and Puigdemont's party left Aragonès alone, who sought parliamentary oxygen in the PSC and En Comú Podem.

2023: 23-J opens a “historic” stage

The adjective “historic” was used yesterday by both Puigdemont and the Secretary of Organization of the PSOE, Santos Cerdán, in their interventions. The general elections of July 23 rebalanced the forces of the two Catalan independence parties. ERC went from 13 to seven deputies, the same number that Junts obtained, which only lost one seat compared to 2019. The PSC, the leading force in Catalonia, obtained 350,000 more votes than both parties combined. Even the PP had more popular support (77,000 more votes than the post-convergents and 6,000 more than the Republicans). But parliamentary arithmetic once again left secessionism with the key in its hands. If Puigdemont assured a few days before the elections that his party would not support Sánchez's investiture because they did not trust the socialist candidate, the numbers, as so often happens in politics, once again went over the newspaper archive and it was, of course, beginning, the former Catalan president himself who took the reins of the negotiations with the PSOE, culminating yesterday with the pact for the investiture and the commitment to negotiate the resolution of the political conflict during the legislature.