How Catalan conservatives caused Spanish elections by repeating the SNP’s historic error to bring down Callaghan

Luke James

When the Labour government led by Cardiff MP James Callaghan lost a vote of confidence by a single vote, the Scottish National Party paid a heavy price for their decision to vote against the government.

Not only did they lose nine of their eleven seats in the election which followed, but they were blamed for ushering in a Conservative government led by Margaret Thatcher. An accusation which followed them for decades.

Few remembered that more Liberals voted with the Conservatives in the hope of an election before Jeremy Thorpe went on trial for attempted murder (of which he was cleared), or the circumstances which led to the vote: the winter of discontent, the lost devolution referendums, six Labour by-election losses to the Conservatives.

The events of March 1979 came to mind this week when Spain’s Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez called a snap general election after losing two important votes in the Spanish parliament.

Sanchez’s government had tabled two housing reforms amid a scandal over the eviction of an elderly woman in Madrid which sparked mass demonstrations.

Maricarmen Abascal, an 87-year-old from Madrid, was removed by police from the flat where she had lived for 70 years last month after an investment firm bought her building and raised her rent from €500 to €2,650 a month. Abascal’s eviction was overturned but she has since passed away.

It was in this highly charged atmosphere that the Spanish Congress voted on two housing bills: one extending protections for vulnerable tenants and a ban on vulture funds buying property, the other allowing the automatic renewal of rental contracts without rent increases.

Sanchez depended on the support of six nationalist parties from Catalonia, the Basque Country, Galicia and Valencia, as he has done since the 2023 general election.

Their role as kingmakers has enabled these parties to win major concessions, particularly for Catalonia.

For the first time, their members of the Spanish Congress can make speeches in Catalan, Basque and Galician and the Spanish government is pushing to make them official EU languages.

A new financial settlement was reached that increased the budget of the Catalan government by almost 5 billion Euro.

Most notably, an amnesty law was passed for politicians and activists persecuted for their involvement in the 2017 independence referendum, including exiled former president Carles Puigdemont.

Yet it is Puigdemont’s own party, the centre-right Junts per Catalunya, which effectively brought down the government.

Four left-wing nationalist parties – Esquerra Republicana from Catalonia, EH Bildu from the Basque Country, the BNG from Galicia, and Compromís from Valencia – supported both housing bills.

The centre-right Basque National Party voted for the first but not the second.

But Junts voted against both, saying the laws would not solve the housing crisis and were unfair to small landlords, who make up an important part of their support base.

Such is the anger at their decision, the former mayor of Barcelona Ada Colau predicted that when Puigdemont finally returns from exile “he will have problems walking the streets of Catalonia.”

Despite being cleared to return to Catalonia immediately on Tuesday, Catalan media is reporting that Puigdemont may not return until after the elections in order to avoid being mired in the scandal.

The rise of the far-right Aliança Catalana, with its stronghold in a town which sheltered Welsh anti-fascist fighters during the Spanish Civil War, looms behind Junts’ decision.

Capitalising on disillusionment with mainstream independence parties following the 2017 referendum, Aliança has captured many of Junts’ supporters.

A poll published by La Vanguardia on Sunday showed Junts would lose more than half their 35 seats in the Catalan parliament if there was an election now with Alianca rising from three to 30.

Belligerent

Junts have responded by taking a more belligerent approach to the Sanchez government. Not only on the constitution questions, but increasingly on social issues.

“Socialism has led society into an economic, social, and political abyss,” wrote Junts MP Miriam Nogueras in an article justifying her party’s decision, which did not mention independence.

Many will see this as a return to normality for Junts. Its forerunner party, Convergència i Unió, used its role as kingmaker in Madrid in the mid-1990s to bring down a socialist government and replace it with a conservative one.

And it was pushed slowly towards support for independence by the scale of the grassroots social movement which emerged in response to the attacks on Catalonia’s Statute of Autonomy in 2006.

In prioritising its conservatism over its constitutional aims, Junts may appeal to its social base which contains fewer renters and more property owners than any other party.

But a data analysis by the Diari Ara newspaper shows that while it stands to gain among centre-right voters who don’t support independence, its position is alienating large numbers of its current supporters for whom independence remains an important issue.

That is because the only alternative government in Madrid is one made up of the conservative Partido Popular and far-right Vox.

The PP were the only party which voted against the Statute of Autonomy passed by the Catalan Parliament in 2006 and then referred it to Spain’s constitutional court which rendered it meaningless.

When that sparked the movement for independence that led to the 2017 referendum, it was a PP government that sent riot police from across Spain to violently seize ballot boxes and shut polling stations.

Anti-Catalan

Their potential coalition partners Vox are rabidly anti-Catalan and their ultimate aim is to abolish devolution within the Spanish state. As Politico Europe reported this week, Vox sees the election “as its big chance to reshape Spain.”

When voters go to the polls on November 29, Junts is at real risk of going down in history as being the midwife to a government even more right-wing than the one which the SNP were blamed for delivering.

And the tragic death of Maricarmen Abascal means that, unlike in 1979, people are unlikely to forget the circumstances in which it came about.

The determination of people to continue her fight might just save Junts from the long term consequences of their actions.

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