The offer from the president in exile, Carles Puigdemont, for a joint candidacy with ERC and CUP for the European election in May 2019 seems ever less likely to take shape. Puigdemont proposed to stand as the second name on a list headed by Oriol Junqueras (ERC) with Anna Gabriel (CUP) at number three.
CUP came out quickly to reject the idea. ERC's response was slower and less public. Junqueras' party has avoided taking a stance and opted for silence, whether to avoid starting a new crisis with their government partners, now it seems that bridges are being built back between Puigdemont and Junqueras, or to avoid giving the proposal more buzz.
Although ERC hasn't yet publicly rejected the proposal, nothing suggests that there is a chance for the joint list will end up being a possibility. ERC have been working for weeks on their list of candidates for the election, to be led by Oriol Junqueras.
Moreover, they've been supporting the idea of separate candidacies for the different pro-independence parties for months, arguing it's the option which would get the most votes. Nothing suggests that this position has changed.
In fact, just this Wednesday, Junqueras repeated the stance in an interview with Cadena Ser Catalunya. He said it's most effective for the independence movement to present separate candidacies for the election, but with a joint approach as to how to achieve the best result possible.
Looking for the Spanish republican vote
ERC has, in the past, variously stood for European elections in coalitions with parties from the Basque County, Galicia, Andalusia and elsewhere. That happened, for example, in 2009, with the Europa dels Pobles (Europe of the Peoples) list. In 2014, however, they stood alone to mark out their individuality, at a time when the pro-independence movement was already tense in the run-up to the first "consultation" on 9th November that year.
For the 2019 election, there is an ongoing debate as to whether they should join back with some of these parties, like EH Bildu or BNG.
What is clear, however, is that ERC's objective for this election is to ratify its 2014 victory and even, if possible, improve its results. For this reason, they've chosen Junqueras to head their list, believing him to be a choice which can help them cross borders, collecting votes denouncing the repression in Catalonia and putting the issue at the heart of the European debate.
One of the main objectives of their candidacy is to denounce the repression in Catalonia at a European level, over a year after Junqueras was sent to prison. In European elections, Spain counts as a whole, so Catalans can vote for parties from other autonomous communities, and people from around Spain can vote for Catalan parties. As such, ERC hopes to win votes from Spanish republicans, in the same way that pro-independence Catalans have voted for the pro-independence Basque left in prior European elections to support their cause.