Now that the deadline to present coalitions for the 21st December election has passed, a group of people have started working on the idea of making a group of electors to substitute the parties to present a joint pro-independence electoral list.
The joint list is a bad idea because not everyone agrees on what has to be done. The same thing happened after the election on 27th September 2015. When not everyone agrees, there's always a distance between what is said publicly in the name of the coalition and what is said privately and sincerely. And although this distance always exists, when the political framework being worked from is "unity", the danger is redoubled when it becomes institutionalised and we find ourselves, at the end of the process, in the alien and dangerous situation of declaring independence without having anything ready, nor being ready to do anything to put it into practice.
One of the problems that has lead to our current situation is directly related to that. I'll try to explain: during the whole spring of 2017, the members of the government of both parties were sure that the Spanish government wouldn't allow the celebration of a referendum, not even as a second "consultation" a la 9th November 2014. As such, the key was that neither ERC (Catalan Republican Left) nor PDeCAT (Catalan European Democratic Party) had to express their opinions about what had to be done if the referendum was held and they won. The only thing they had to do was make it clear to the electorate that a) they were organising a referendum and b) they were in favour of the unity of the independence movement. As such, when the referendum proved impossible, the blame would fall on the Spanish state and PDeCAT and ERC could stand in the election saying they had done everything possible to carry it out and we'd have a second plebiscite, with a joint list or without it, but maybe with the roles exchanged: ERC ahead and PDeCAT putting a positive spin on their decline, or correcting it with Puigdemont as a candidate.
From summer onwards, however, some of the parties and government departments started working seriously on organising the referendum. The expectation was still that it wouldn't be allowed to go ahead, but maybe something would be allow and, as such, they had to have something ready, even if it were an "emmental" referendum (one full of holes). The important thing was that the other party in the coalition couldn't blame you for having done nothing. And, regardless, if someone had to be accused of incompetence, it should be done naturally, it didn't have to be pointed out for everyone to see it. In the most optimistic predictions, the referendum would be held as a second 9th November, but the immediate consequence of that would be elections and not a declaration of independence. That explains why some departments did nothing, "because they didn't see the play", or why in some of the departments that did do things, like the Economy department, their leaders admitted in private calls facts now public that they weren't ready to declare independence.
Once again, it was a game of chicken, like those scenes in American films where two cars accelerate towards a cliff and the loser is the first driver to jump out of their seat and roll on the floor. The departments controlled by vice-president Junqueras, perhaps the most active ones in organising the referendum, were sure that the driver of PDeCAT would jump out of their car before they reached the cliff, and the driver of PDeCAT was convinced that the incompetence of ERC would mean their car would break down in front of everyone before reaching the abyss, because the Spanish state would set up enough dead-end streets to show everyone that a referendum was impossible with a state against it.
However well-intentioned the groups of electors and the calls to be more than parties based on unity might be, it would be a mistake and that has to be said
These problems come from the joint list because it proved impossible to bring up disagreements and differences of opinion in public. The political and psychological framework of the independence movement over these years has been that everyone had to move forwards together as one, with no cracks and, as such, whoever publicly suggested that the strategy might be incorrect, the final intentions unclear, or the specific tactics wrong immediately created a problem that had to be solved as it would hurt this unity. The incentive for everyone was to say that everything was planned, whether they knew it or not, that everything was going well, although they weren't discussing things that had to be discussed, and that everyone trusted we'd go there together, even if privately they had doubts. It was expected that the state's opposition would solve it, or it would be discussed in private, or it would end up obvious to everyone who had the greatest commitment to unity and who went in their own direction with an electoral mindset.
It's true that some of these problems are not solved with separate lists, but with a joint list it's worse because it's not true that the whole independence movement agrees on what has to be done. With a joint list we would offer again an appearance of unity around ideas which don't create a consensus with the hopes that events would correct them, and we go back to the beginning.
It's good that there's no consensus. It's very good. No one can see the whole playing field now, and no one can consider all the options, because all of us know more about some things than others, and we have ideological biases and the fruits of personal experience. It's important for there to be someone who has the strength, electorally and parliamentarily, to be able to say: I don't agree with this path and we have to try another for such and such a reason. And that should be done publicly and should have electoral consequences. That's what democracy is about: not being right, but correcting each others' insufficiencies and then, yes, reaching agreements based on compromise.
I know that there are things which, when looking to becoming independent from a hostile state, you cannot say publicly, but there are a lot which you can, and which we're not saying because we're scared of breaking up the unity, instead of worrying about whether this unity is leading us in a good direction, or we're all going together to starvation or the abyss.
However well-intentioned the groups of electors and the calls to be more than parties based on unity might be, it would be a mistake and that has to be said. The parties, with all their defects, have many virtues: among others, that they have people who know the administration and know how to calculate which risks they want to take to achieve our dreams. We have to demand that they explicitly do so in a pluralistic context because we're in an exceptional moment and we cannot discount any idea in the name of unity. And I say that in defence both of those who would want to take a longer, slower path and those who want it to be shorter and quicker. We need all the intelligence we have at our disposal, and that means confronting ideas publicly and directly. Fortunately we have the perfect mechanism to do so: the Parliament. But a variety of voices are needed with their own turns to speak and with the need to assert their own arguments and strengths. It's urgent to make the relationship of strengths explicit.
It's the pressure to show that we all agree when we don't that has brought us to a place in which independence has been declared without having anything ready, nor having thought what it would mean to put it into practice. Everyone thought that the other side would jump out of their car first, or the state would destroy the fabrication. And in the end, condemned by ignorance of the other's reasons, it was like Thelma and Louise, the car sailing into the abyss.