Catalan president backs consensus for referendum in new ministers picks

It's a new era for Catalonia. After Junts per Catalunya left the pro-independence government, president Pere Aragonès named seven new ministers to take the places of the outgoing heads of department from the former junior coalition partner. 

The longstanding unity of the pro-independence movement is now broken after Junts per Catalunya left the government on Friday following an internal vote among their members. 

The slow breakup after ten years of collaboration and unity has led to Catalan president Pere Aragonès, of the left-wing pro-independence party Esquerra Republicana (Republican Left), naming the seven new ministers to replace the positions vacated by Junts per Catalunya on Sunday night. 

The new direction the Catalan government now takes leans to the left, as the new choices of department heads come from left-wing ERC, Socialists, or En Comú Podem, while just one hails from a center-right background due to their past with the previous hegemonic party in Catalonia, Convergència.  

Most newly named heads of departments of government are members of pro-independence ERC, who are now governing solo with just 33 seats of support of the total 135 in the Catalan parliament. 

However, some names among the new ministers stick out as signals of potential future collaboration with other parties. In particular, the new minister of the department of justice, rights, and memory, Gemma Usabart, is a signal of such support being sought from possible to-be-formed allies.

Usabart was previously the president of the Catalan branch of the left-wing party Podemos, formed out of citizens' fury against the 2008 financial crash, and who are now the junior coalition partner of the Spanish government, supporting the Socialists led by Pedro Sánchez. 

The coalition government between Esquerra Repulbicana and Junts per Catalunya broke up because of severe differences in how to approach the pursuit of independence, both parties' shared goal. 

But Podemos are unlike any other party in the political landscape of Catalonia or Spain – they are in favor of letting people vote in a referendum, but have not formally positioned themselves on either side of the debate. They support the large mobilizations of the population that the country saw at the peak of the independence crisis five years ago, but want to find solutions that "go beyond yes or no" to independence, as MP Marc Parés told Catalan News recently. 

After Junts announced their departure from the government on Friday evening, president Pere Aragonès spoke publicly, and emphasized the 80% consensus withing Catalonia in support of holding a self-determination referendum – a figure that counts all of the pro-independence forces plus the votership of En Comú Podem, the Catalan branch of Podemos, in favor of an independence vote. 

The naming of Carlos Campuzano is also something of an olive branch outside of the ERC circle. Campuzano has long been associated with the political forefathers of Junts per Catalunya – first Convergència, and more recently Partit Democràta Europeu Català (PDeCAT). 

Campuzano was an MP in the Spanish Congress in Madrid for years with Convergència and PDeCAT, but he never officially joined Junts when they were formally formed as a political party in 2020. 

Regardless, his naming as a minister shows that ERC are open to branching out beyond party lines. Campuzano never joined JxCat as he did not subscribe to the confrontational approach toward Spain regarding the independence question as Junts in general did. ERC, meanwhile, are in favor of a gradualist approach to independence, engaging in dialogue with Spanish authorities to agree on a legally binding referendum. 

Joaquim Nadal's naming as the new minister for universities and research is another interesting choice for such a high-profile position. Nadal has a storied history with the Socialist party, and was mayor of Girona between 1979-2002 with the left-leaning unionist party, but began to drift away from the party throughout the 21st century as the independence movement grew momentum and his own party came to take a more and more unionist and anti-referendum stance.