As the campaign ends today and the voting is on Sunday, here goes with the runners and riders for the Catalan regional/national (choose according to taste) election on Sunday. Tomorrow is a day of reflection (1/X) #14F

First up we have Vox, the Spanish neo-fascist party. It’s by far the most extreme of the new far-right parties in western Europe. It wants to end the Autonomous Community system of government and run everything from Madrid (2/X)

and its national leader has compared the Franco regime favourably with the current democratic system. Needless to say, it’s obsessed with the doings of Muslims and the supposed violence and crime caused by immigrants (3/x)

The party's candidate is Ignacio Garriga and were it not for his appalling views he'd be a credible one. He's also black, a fact which is supposed to protect the party from charges of racism (4/x)

Vox will certainly win enough support to be represented in the Catalan parliament. The question is whether it will achieve the sorpasso and come in ahead of the Partido Popular (5/x)

The Partido Popular is the all-of-Spain right/centre-right party and in Alejandro Fernández it has an excellent candidate. He's funny, ironic and a moderate in political terms. He has two problems though (6/x)

The first is that since Mariano Rajoy retired the party at the national level has moved towards the hard right, both out of a need to protect its base from Vox and because thats to the taste of its leader Pablo Casado 7/x

The second problem is connected, while there’s a vast market for hard-right Catalan nationalist votes, the one for national level hard-right votes here is much smaller and Fernández is therefore fighting against Vox on ground he’s very uncomfortable with 8/x

Next we have Ciudadanos. What a bizarre story that party has. Founded by leftish intellectuals worried that the Catalan Socialist Party was becoming too indy curious it moved steadily to the right under Albert Rivera 9/x

so far to the right that it ended up sharing a platform with Vox “in defense of the Constitution” two years ago. It did very well in the Catalan election of December 2017 when it benefitted from the wave of emotion against the October indy ref 10/X

Now led by Carlos Carrizosa, a much less impressive figure than Inés Arrimadas, who has moved on to national politics in Madrid, it looks set for a hiding this time around, losing votes both to the right and left now that indy is no longer a worry 11/x

Next we have En Comú Podem, the local expression of Podemos. Most of its economic and social policies are reasonable, in any case, worth discussing and it has an excellent candidate in Jéssica Albiach. Its problems are that it’s emotionally in hock to Catalan nationalism 12/X

but the CatNats despise them for their “I am not a nationalist but I support self-determination for Catalonia” cavillings, and that Pablo Iglesias seems more enthused by the idea of a victory for the out and proud CatNats than he does for them13/x

The PSOE doesn’t organise in Catalonia, what we have is the PSC, the Catalan Socialist Party, with which it is closely linked. The party has a strong social `base and a distinctly catalanist identity, which is not the same as a nationalist one 14X

Being catalanist is a way of living the distinctive language and culture here without seeking to break away from Spain, even of seeing Catalonia as having a special role in leading it 15X

Santiago Illa is the party’s candidate this time. He’s recently resigned as Spain’s Health Minister after spending the last year fighting the pandemic, with similar results to neighbouring countries 16 / X

His shtick is “I am the return of the sensible, middle of the road, catalanism that all these nationalist loons have pushed aside over the last 10 years, with me you’ll be able to live your life without thinking about politics all the time” 17/x

Turning now to the other side of the political chasm we have Junts per Catalunya leading the CatNat pack. It's candidate is Laura Borràs and its de facto leader is Carles Puigdemont, who lives in Belgium 18/x

Junts is the largest splinter broken from the previously hegemonic Convergencìa and it’s the rough Catalan nationalist equivalent of Vox. Quim Torra, the previous president of the Catalan government was fond of speculation about 19/x

the genetic "defects" of Spanish people and their beast like speech. The party's current list of candidates includes many who talk freely of half Catalonia's population as "colonos" and "nyordos". This kind of talk is only a hair's breadth from calls for ethnic cleansing 20/x

Next we have the Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC), this is notionally a mainstream centre left party that just happens to be Catalan. It’s leader Oriol Junqueras is currently on day release from prison to help with the campaign 21/x

and its candidate is Pere Aragonès, a charisma vacuum and the scion of a tourism biz dynasty that did very nicely under the Franco regime. The ERC’s main problem is that it feels that it has to constantly prove its nationalist credentials 22/x

because it fears being outflanked on that side, so this leads to crazy behaviour like cosying up to convicted kidnapper Arnaldo Ortega and its secretary general saying that ETA is the example the party should follow 23/x

This is ERC. Are socialists first? Nationalists first? What exactly are we? 24/x

Next we have the CUP, the Candidatura d'Unitat Popular, a colourful mix of the hard left, irredentist nationalism (much talk of the unity of the "Catalan countries", including a bit of France) and student assembly style decision making 25/x

Despite their implacable opposition to capitalism when the chips are down the comrades of the CUP always find that the best thing to do is to support the mainstream CatNats in key votes 26/x

And finally, we come to PDeCAT, the Democratic Party of Cataluña, another limb from the broken body of Convergència, an attempt to return to the Happy Time when the going was good for not obviously racist Catalan nationalism 27/x

And the likely result? Hard to be sure. The indy voter is always more motivated and the electoral system favours nationalist rural areas over cosmopolitan urban ones. That said, Illa's candidacy has give a major boost to the Socialists 28/X

As the campaign has been "All against Illa" the post-election negs are likely to be also, despite their profound mutual hatred Junts and ERC look likely to form another coalition even if the Socialists end up as the biggest party. But we'll see... 29 (Ends)

@APHClarkson @lopez_vallet @DrMelFarrell @joehas @LQuefresqueti @pablomarzocca @SpaJw
@Felix_Nuno @Sudacata @Casfetera @KeohaneDan @rob_marchant @carlos_abadi @garvanwalshe might be of interest ICYMI