Last Thursday's demonstration in Brussels has had a calming effect on the independence movement. For the first time in the movement as a whole there is a sense of the need to respond in the elections of 21st December. The third electoral tracking poll carried out by the firm Feedback for El Nacional, with polling that concluded on Friday night, is the best mark reached by the Catalan independence parties in a long time, better even than the result they achieved in the last Catalan elections, held in September 2015. In fact, if these were the real results, the sum of the percentages of the three pro-independence parties would rise to 48.58%, with an estimated turn-out of 81.96%, seven percent more than in 2015, which itself broke records for voter participation in a Catalan election. The independence movement, in spite of the bad omens constantly hanging over it, continues to be absolutely robust in its state of poor health. What is important with regard to the elections is that it must be capable of reacting not only in the street when it feels attacked, but also when faced with the ballot boxes, with its electoral hegemony and the future model for Catalonia in play.
The independence movement receives this magnificent news when one third of the most anomalous campaign of any electoral contest ever celebrated in Spain has been completed. The fact that the president, candidate for Together for Catalonia, is in exile, and the vice president, candidate for Catalan Republican Left, is in prison, is not causing the tide of pro-independence voters to recede. According to the third Feedback tracking poll, the distance between the two blocks, pro-independence and unionist, is greater than five points. That is a more than respectable figure, and with the first third of the campaign completed, it seems that the three pro-Spain parties are losing momentum as a whole and it could turn out that on 21st December, unlike in other elections, the most mobilized vote during the weeks prior to the campaign has been that of the unionists and not their opponents.
In any case, the large number of undecided voters, which the survey estimates at almost 1.5 million—about a hundred thousand less than in the previous tracking poll— and which proportionately account for 26.4% of the electorate, leaves many options open when only eleven days remain until the election. The independence movement has, within its reach, an historic victory which will have to be confirmed in the results of upcoming surveys and, above all, on December 21st. The best piece of news, however, is that the indifference and annoyance among pro-independence people that dragged on after the failure to consolidate the Catalan Republic, is giving way to an active militancy in favour of going out to vote to restore the institutions that have been snatched by those who approved the application of article 155.