Catalonia secession push halted as party opposes Mas

Spain’s Catalonia region faces fresh elections after a small anti-capitalist party, the CUP, refused to support the pro-independence leader Artur Mas.

After stepping up his separatist challenge over the past three years, Mas failed to win outright re-election as Catalonia’s president in regional elections on September 27, leaving his Junts pel Si platform relying on the CUP’s backing to form a government.

The Catalan deadlock comes as Spain faces weeks of political uncertainty nationally, after an inconclusive general election on 20 December.

But the alliance still lacked a workable majority without the ten seats that were won by another pro-independence faction, the far-left Popular Unity Candidates (CUP) party.

Local newspaper El Periódico reported the vote was decided by a difference of four votes.

“I’m very relaxed and I want to fight, to forge ahead”, Mas said a day after the CUP party announced once and for all that it would not back him as president, as the Jan 9 deadline to form a government approaches dangerously close.

The alliance has so far maintained full support for Mas.

“Mas said that he won’t be an obstacle for independence”, said Saladie.

ANALYSIS: Catalan Elections: All Together for a Yes?

On Saturday, dozens of Mr. Mas’s backers started a hunger strike to try to pressure the CUP to free up its votes for him.

Its rejection of Mr Mas means the Catalan parliament will be dissolved on 10 January and elections called for March.

However, the messy and protracted process to choose a Catalan leader in the aftermath of the September election, hailed at the time as a victory for separatists, has cast a pall over the independence movement and highlighted its divisions.

The button-down Mr. Mas, 59 years old, has evolved in recent years from a pillar of the Spanish political establishment to a thorn in the side of the national government who is regularly assailed by the media in Madrid. That’s because a pro-independence government in Catalonia would have justified a national “grand coalition” of the PP and Socialists, the country’s main parties, along with Ciudadanos, he said. He first took office in 2010 and publicly embraced the independence push two years later, after around one million Catalans took to the streets to press for secession. Former regional president and prominent Catalan nationalist Jordi Pujol charged with money-laundering on Wednesday as part of a long-running investigation into his hidden bank accounts.