Only fifteen months after the last Catalan election (21st December 2017), and after all the difficulties encountered electing a Catalan president over the Spanish state's opposition to three deputies -Carles Puigdemont, Jordi Sànchez and Jordi Turull- being invested by the chamber, the opposition has managed to pass a bill calling for a new election to be held or for president Quim Torra to submit to a confidence motion. The result was 62 to 61, although two caveats should be mentioned: the opposition's 62 could have reached 65 if all their deputies had been present and the 61 the government had arithmetically are 66 politically, since Puigdemont, Comín, Sànchez, Turull and Rull cannot vote and haven't delegated their votes whilst in exile or prison.
It's obvious that whilst this last situation continues, any vote is tainted from the start and some of the opposition parties should understand it as such. It's logical it should be the strategy of PP and Ciudadanos, embarked on an infinite race of insults towards Catalan leaders, not hiding their objective of steamrolling Catalan autonomy. But this Thursday's vote had two other actors. PSC, which always takes the opposite political position to the independence movement, although at times it looks to make efforts for this to be noticed as little as possible and others it puffs its chest out and warns of a new article 155. This attitude from PSC shouldn't be surprising, but do take it into consideration as a warning looking towards the upcoming elections. It wouldn't be the first time that votes had a different result to what politicians had preached during the campaign.
But the true magic trick was pulled off by En Comú. Can you be against the state's repression, the unjust imprisonment of deputies and the exile of others, and take advantage of this situation to further your own interests? Is that ethically acceptable? We're in the middle of campaigning for the Spanish general, municipal and European elections, a cycle which will end on 26th May. The president shouldn't call an election because the political circumstances of 21st December and the majority obtained then haven't changed. It's true that governing in the current circumstances is enormously complicated. And that those who call for the government to take actions which require new investment are those who are keeping the tap closed to better funding for Catalonia.
The government has to ignore calls to call an election in Catalonia and denounce the strange game in which the opposition (at least a large portion of it) plays the role of executioner by day and victim by night. And if there's an alternative majority to the independence movement which turns to a motion of no-confidence, those are the rules of democracy. Inés Arrimadas, as head of the opposition, is permanently invited to do so. But she must trust little in that possibility as her destination, in a few weeks, is the Congress in Madrid.