With the constitution of the Council for the Republic's Assembly of Representatives this Sunday in Canet del Rosselló (Northern Catalonia) and the subsequent election of the speaker - Ona Curto, municipal councillor of the CUP in Arenys de Mar - and the other four members who will accompany her as officials on the Bureau, chosen from among the 121 representatives elected in electronic voting for the Assembly at the end of October, an important step has been taken in the operation of a body created to be quite separate from the politics based on Catalonia as an Autonomous Community.
The Council aims to be a transversal body and to act as the permanent engine of the demand for the independence of Catalonia, and the elections for the Bureau of the Assembly - the parliament of the Council for the Republic - have had an air of the political transversality which is essential to start a new stage. The next step will probably be the election of the president of the Council, a mere formality, if desired, but which would democratically ratify the position held since its founding by Carles Puigdemont. Although no date has been set, it is speculated that this vote could be held before the end of the year, as the penultimate step and the prelude to the election of the Council's government that would end the current provisionality.
For the speaker's position on the Assembly to have gone to Ona Curto, a councillor for the CUP, cannot be a coincidence. Nor is it that, as a demonstration of the fact that the Council is not stifled by the many attacks it has received for its proximity to Junts, the representation of the party led by exiled president Puigdemont on the Bureau is very contained. So much so, that some of those criticisms will now be more difficult to maintain with very much consistency. The Council currently has a total of 101,530 registered members, a figure far from the ambitious forecasts that were made when it was founded, but not at all insignificant at a time of strong political demobilization. One only needs to look at the number of members that political parties have to get an idea of what the figure of 101,530 affiliates means today.
This transversality that has been sought does, however, retain a considerable limitation in the face of the attitude of ERC, very distant from the Council for the Republic and with much less involvement. This has been the case since its inception and although ERC has been present, it has always been represented there by politicians from the second line, and while also giving constant criticism, identifying the body as an instrument of Puigdemont and Junts. There is no indication that the ERC will change its perception, let alone without an agreement on the roadmap for independence for the next few years beyond having a joint government to direct the destinies of the Generalitat. A distribution of portfolios which is almost identical in order to keep going in the meantime.