The PSC congress on Sunday has culminated the change of the elections of last February. The then first secretary, Miquel Iceta, was appointed minister and Salvador Illa, until recently head of Health, was a candidate for the Generalitat and converted to the PSC in the first Catalan match. Now, Iceta becomes president of the PSC, a non-executive position, and Illa assumes the first secretary with a big change in the executive. A change that starts from the policy initiated by Iceta in 2014. And, even earlier, by Pere Navarro.
After the Constitutional ruling in 2010 against the Statute (being president Zapatero), and the beginning of the ‘procés’ with the right to decide of Artur Mas in 2012, the PSC not only lost the presidency of the Generalitat but also suffered a great bleeding of supports. The theorists (or corifeans) of Artur Mas assured that the PSC was condemned to marginalization, because it had been left out of the new Catalan centrality: the right to decide and independence.
Nine years later, the PSC is the first party while the old CDC self-liquidated, several groups discuss its heritage and the most important (JxCat) is not the one that Mas supported in the last elections. And ERC presides over the Generalitat.
Why has the PSC recovered? Perhaps because in a very stressed environment, he stuck to his own thing (self-government) and did not allow himself to be satelliteized by a pro-independence movement that the majority of his constituents did not share. But he was also very careful not to fall into the anti-separatist radicalism. Already in the 2017 elections – shortly after the failure of the famous DUI – Iceta affirmed that the pardon for the defendants would be a useful step towards normalization. And this has been the case, to the point that the ‘ABC’, in its poll last Sunday – in which it inquired about the controversial decisions of Pedro Sánchez – did not ask about the pardons.
This Catalan federalism, without fanfare, in which it seemed consistent that PSC militants were ministers in Madrid -as Narcís Serra Y Ernest Lluch, with success in Defense and Health – is what many Catalans have once again supported by making the most voted list to that of Salvador Illa, Minister of Health during much of the pandemic. Iceta, with 17 deputies and 13.8% of the votes, halted the fall in the 2017 elections and, in February, Illa has almost doubled the deputies (33) and has obtained the highest percentage of votes for the PSC since Pasqual Maragall.
The Catalan conflict it is still there, but it is clear that the political climate (not only because of the negotiating table with Madrid) is very different from that of the last legislature. Illa intends to govern Catalonia and he has expanded and rejuvenated a team that wants, to begin with, fight in the next municipal elections. The goal – to govern Catalonia – is not easy, but the PSC, like many social democratic parties, is well anchored in its country, and wants to be part of the solutions.
But ideologies are not the guarantee. The SPDKey to the resurgence of the PSOE in the Transition, it once again has the Chancellery in Germany after twelve years of collaboration with Merkel. Other more dogmatic socialist parties – like the French – fare much worse. Is in the german model -which combines the will to social progress with knowing how to govern without fuss- in which Catalan -and Spanish- socialism should be looked at.
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The PSC is back because it has assumed something unpopulist: that in today’s troubled democracies respect for plurality and competition They must prevail over the radicalism of the emotions.
Reference-www.elperiodico.com