Trouble ahead

The ruling party does badly, but is heading for more clashes with Madrid

AS VICTORIES go, it was a humiliation. Catalonia’s premier, Artur Mas, had hoped to ride into history on the back of a surge in support for independence. Yet on November 25th he joined the list of European leaders hammered by austerity-exhausted voters. Although the polls had suggested that his Convergence and Union (CiU) coalition, which is more separatist than ever, would win an absolute majority, it got its worst result since 1980. After winning only 31% of the vote and losing a fifth of his deputies Mr Mas controls just 50 in the 135-seat assembly. He will get a second term, but with diminished authority.

Yet the glee among Mr Mas’s opponents was short-lived. The People’s Party of Spain’s prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, had also hoped to do well. In fact it came fourth, gaining just one extra seat, and has lost a valuable ally in Mr Mas, whom it had propped up for his previous two-year term. The result is a mess. Mr Mas is a reformist and fiscal conservative. But his new coalition partner is likely to be the Catalan Republican Left (ERC), which pumped up the deficit last time it shared power. Only a desire for greater sovereignty unites the two. But whereas the ERC, which more than doubled its number of deputies to 21, demands full independence, the CiU is split. Its minority component, the Catalan Democratic Union, is more restrained than Mr Mas, seeking at most a confederation. It also heartily dislikes the ERC.

Things look worse still from Madrid. Instead of helping Mr Rajoy to reform the economy and cut public spending, CiU will now lurch into confrontation. It wants more tax money for Catalonia, but there is none to spare. The ERC will bind it to a promised referendum on independence that Mr Rajoy’s government plans to reject. Years of sniping await.

Catalan voters followed a Spanish trend by abandoning mainstream parties. The CiU, the Socialists and the PP won a combined 58% of the vote, down from 69% two years ago. Instead voters went to the ERC or the vehemently anti-separatist Citizens party. Mr Mas may wait four years before calling a referendum, meaning after the next general election. Yet even if Spain’s Socialists then oust Mr Rajoy, their position on Catalonia is woolly at best, helping to create further uncertainty.

Where did things go wrong for Mr Mas? Separatists claim that dark arts were used against him. They point to a purported police report connecting him and other bigwigs to foreign bank accounts that was leaked to the newspaper El Mundo. Mr Mas is suing. A recent general strike reminded voters of their biggest discontents: recession, austerity and joblessness. The OECD sees unemployment reaching 27%

. Unusually high voting in working-class suburbs boosted the anti-separatist, left-wing vote. Against this, some complained about Mr Mas’s largesse with the local press. Did subsidies buy loyalties, inflating the narrative of Mr Mas as a Moses leading his people to the promised land?

The Catalan government’s own Centre for Opinion Studies gave Mr Mas an absolute majority only two weeks ago. So can its figures on how Catalans would vote in an independence referendum (a 57% “yes”) be trusted? Jordi Sauret, of Feedback pollsters, believes the number would fall to 45% or less in a real poll.

Mr Mas cannily kept the word independence out of his manifesto and speeches. Instead he deployed a lexicon of ambiguity—“structures of state” or “sovereignty”—that left wiggle-room if things went wrong. They did. But, with the ERC as his partner, a weaker Mr Mas will be forced into greater clarity. And that points to more trouble between Madrid and Barcelona.