MEP Raul Romeva will head pro-independence joint list for 27-S election

Raul Romeva, Carme Forcadell, and Muriel Casals will head the list of candidates on the joint electoral list hammered out by Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya (CDC), Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC), and separatist civil society groups for the 27-S parliamentary election in Catalonia. The civil society groups Catalan National Assembly and Òmnium Cultural green lighted the deal during a meeting at the Palau de la Generalitat, the seat of the Catalan government. Other separatist parties, such as Democràcia Catalana and Moviment d’Esquerres, also had the chance to weigh in. As part of the agreement, the Catalan president, Artur Mas, will be the fourth candidate on the list, and Oriol Junqueras, the leader of ERC, will be the fifth.

Romeva, an MEP for the European Green Party, said that Catalonia’s independence is ‘neither the delusion of an individual, nor the obsession of an institution, or the result of manipulation by a party’. In an interview with the Catalan television channel TV3, Romeva said that independence ‘is the demand of a very significant portion of the Catalan people, a part that is far from negligible, and it is something that has broken all kinds of taboos at the European level’. During the interview, Romeva also referred to his experience as an MEP. Having been in politics, he said, he is now returning to the social sphere where he had been active for a decade, helping organize campaigns for peace and disarmament, among other activities. ‘I’ve been in politics, but my background is in social activism. Therefore, in a way, I’m returning to the fold I left in order to join the European Parliament’, he said.

As for the remaining names on the pro-independence joint electoral list, the sixth and seventh slots will not be held by politicians, and, from the eighth candidate onward, 58% of the positions will go to CDC, and 42% to ERC. Whether the parties decide to fill them with party members or independent candidates is up to them, but if they designate candidates from outside the party, they must seek the approval of the rest of participants in the joint list. Demòcrates de Catalunya could possibly join the list under the quota assigned to CDC, and Moviment d’Esquerres could do likewise under ERC’s banner.

CUP does not make the list

CUP has already said it will not participate in the joint candidacy, as it was demanding that politicians be excluded from the list and that constituent assembly elections be held immediately following the 27-S elections for the purpose of drafting a new constitution. The radical left party has argued that the ‘rules of the game’ had been changed and it denied the existence of a deal to form a government, or a non-aggression pact vis-à-vis the candidacy put together by CDC and ERC.