Prime Minister’s strong-arm tactic to destroy independence has failed

MARIANO Rajoy’s strategy has failed spectacularly. He had hoped to destroy the independence movement by taking direct control of Catalonia and then calling an election to sweep the nationalists from power. Instead, his overweening tactics and the strong-arm actions of the Spanish police during October’s referendum have consolidated the position of the pro-independence parties.

Mr Rajoy’s own Popular Party has almost been wiped from the map in Catalonia, with unionist support concentrated on the Citizens’ Party.

Nor, however, can the pro-independence parties claim victory.

The nationalist-unionist balance is almost identical to the last elections.

Pro-independence parties have a majority of seats but only 48 per cent of the vote. This is hardly a convincing mandate.

The only surprise is that Junts Per Catalunya, the list of Carles Puigdemont, came ahead of Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya.

Junts per Catalunya is the heir of the old ruling party, CiU which, like the People’s Party, has been wracked by corruption scandals.

The constitutional middle ground is held by the leftist Catalunya en Comú, which more or less corresponds to Podemos in the rest of Spain.

It supports Catalonia’s right to self-determination but not independence. In a polarised election, this was too difficult a position to hold. They may nevertheless hold the balance of power.

It is difficult to see how a majority government can be formed after this election.

The Citizen’s Party (Cuitadans) is now the largest single party but will struggle to form a coalition.

They have bad relations with the Socialist Party, on which they disagree both on social and economic policy and on the Catalan question.

The pro-independence parties have a majority of seats but only counting on the support of the far-left CUP, which is in favour of pursuing the dead-end goal of unilateral independence, from which the other two pro-independence parties have back-pedalled.

The only stable governing coalition for Catalonia would include both nationalists and unionists, as has happened in the Basque Country.

The Socialists and Esquerra have governed together before, on a centre-left programme combined with extending self-government.

That was in a less polarised era and the reformed devolution statute that resulted was sabotaged by the Constitutional Court, part of the process that got us into the present confrontation. As for another election, that would only repeat the result of the last two.

Both sides in this confrontation played for high stakes and both have lost.

There is a danger that a political polarisation could turn into a social one.

Only a return to the old Catalan politics of compromise and power-sharing can restore confidence in democracy.