The week in which PDeCAT's party conference is to be held, presidents Carles Puigdemont and Quim Torra and the leader of the parliamentary group of Junts per Catalunya, Jordi Sànchez, have presented the foundational manifesto of the Crida Nacional per la República (National Call for the Republic). It aims to be a pro-independence movement, across parties and ideologies, and also a political instrument which can take part in each and every one of the elections which will happen before the full establishment of the republic. The promoters, who feel themselves to be heirs to the 1st October referendum and the Parliament's decision of 27th October and, as a result, say they want to realise Catalonia's right to self-determination, have invited all the pro-independence parties to join but have already received the rejection of ERC whose leaders aren't contemplating, for the moment, joint electoral platforms either locally or nationally.
The movement Carles Puigdemont is promoting is, in practice, an earthquake in the pro-independence world. In fact, everything he's ended up doing for some now has been, in the strict area of the parties, a shake-up, and the announcement of a conflict of certain political tension. In this case, for various reasons: the leadership of the party he's a member of and whose presidency he turned down a few weeks ago, PDeCAT, sees any move he makes as an takeover bid for its organisation. Perfectly well known are the disagreements with its general coordinator, Marta Pascal, who, although she attended this Monday's presentation, opted for a discrete position at the back of the room. Also important were the absentees at the presentation from her team. The fact that Torra and Sànchez, along with other leaders of the parliamentary group JxCat, who have never been members of PDeCAT, are part of the leadership core also worries and concerns them, as happened previously with the Junts per Catalunya candidacy for the election on 21st December last year.
Puigdemont wants to play outside of the dynamic of the parties and has decided to go all in. His success or failure will be marked by whether a snowball effect happens in the national constituent convention which will be held in the autumn. Part of his success will depend on his ability to bring in pro-independence leaders from other parties if he doesn't want the initiative to be perceived as the umpteenth reforming of the old party Convergència. On 21st December last year, Puigdemont bet correctly and successfully with the limited chips he had. Now the bet will be greater, as he's looking for the long-term stability of a platform, but the surrounding parties will not make it easy for him. They've already said so.
ERC has its own plan and CUP does too. In the end, its the names that will make the new political space larger or smaller. Starting by seeing whether Junts pel Sí parliamentary deputies who didn't stand in the last Catalan election join. Names like Germà Bel, Lluís Llach and some other former deputies could feel, perhaps, attracted to it. It remains to be seen. One final note: those who think it's a passing political headline will be mistaken because Puigdemont always plays to the maximum. Everyone knows that.