Where do pro-independence and nationalist parties go from here?
The nationalist parties need to rethink things after particularly bad results. Even the party which did manage to gain a seat did not increase its share of the vote. Nothing has been achieved; indeed, the outlook does not seem very positive at the moment; and so these parties need to rethink what role they want to play in the stateless nations of the Spanish state. Another party that will need to rethink its identity is the PSC, the party responsible for PSOE’s victory. Are the Catalan Socialists willing to play the Catalanist card – and I mean Catalanist, not nationalist – or will they just let Madrid decide everything? It seems unlikely, then, that these elections will bring about any major changes. But continuity itself poses a series of questions, relating, for example, to the crisis that one of the secessionist parties, ERC, now finds itself in after disastrous results. What steps should ERC take now? What future do you envisage for them within the secessionist movement? The first
