Socialist shock

The Catalan and Spanish socialist parties (PSC and PSOE) have a love-hate relationship that clouds their political activity in both Catalonia and in Spain. Yesterday the PSC and the PSOE, which are members of the same parliamentary group in the Spanish parliament, voted differently on a resolution about the right to decide of the Catalan people. What happened yesterday shows how impossible it is to maintain (within the same political party) so many different opinions about the territorial organization of Spain, a matter that so greatly defines the political project of the Socialist party. The PSC and the PSOE don’t agree on whether the will of the Catalan people should be taken into account or not. And this is no small discrepancy. Nonetheless, if these parties were to break apart then both sides would end up losing: neither the PSC nor the PSOE know for sure what their real electoral possibilities would be in Catalonia if they were to stand alone in an election. Until today neither of them had pushed their relation to the breaking point, except perhaps in 1982 when the LOAPA (a recentralization law) was debated. The electoral victories of the PSC and the ministerial appointments in the Spanish central governments always kept the tensions at bay. But now that these “happy” days are over and it is becoming evident that the PSOE doesn’t agree with the Catalan right to self-determination, these tensions are growing again. Nowadays the PSC’s power is at one of the lowest levels in its history, and that in addition, this coincides with the debate about self-determination and the economic crisis, which are all at the top of the political agenda.

This love-hate relationship between the two socialists parties is thus a constant headache to the PSC’s leaders. The need to find a balance between the Spanish-centered ideology of the PSOE and the Catalanism defended by the PSC hasn’t always been easy. For example, in the last few months Pere Navarro, the PSC’s leader, has defended many different and contradictory positionings: he started by affirming that the PSC would not vote either for or against any proposal related to the right to self-determination in the Catalan Parliament. Then, he changed his mind and the PSC voted against the Declaration of Sovereignty. These changes in opinion are due to the impossibility of keep the PSC under the PSOE’s rule and also the PSC’s essence alive at the same time. The PSC’s submission to the PSOE’s will was broken yesterday for the first time in many years, and for the sake of Catalonia we hope that this will be the start of an strategy to keep the PSC’s soul safe from the electoral interests of the PSOE. Sadly, Carme Chacón, head of the PSC’s electoral list in the past general elections, did not share this strategy. She abstained, and therefore, she voted against the PSC in order to keep her options open for becoming the PSOE’s next leader. She prioritized her personal interests over a common interest. The real problem with Chacon’s decision is that she has renounced becoming the leader of the PSOE with a project that would have also maintained the Catalanist essence of the PSC. In other words: her choosing to bet on the PSOE means she has to defend a Spanish nationalism that would please socialists from Extremadura and Andalucía, in clear competition with the Popular Party. That is certainly bad for a hypothetical federalist socialist project, and certainly doesn’t contribute to the future of our country.

http://www.catdem.org/en/notices/2013/02/socialist-shock-7125.php