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Catalans have had a heck of a ride the last decade.
The Spanish region caught the world’s attention in 2017 when its politicians attempted to stage an illegal independence referendum.
The national government in Madrid responded with a tough crackdown that saw half of the region’s leaders imprisoned and the rest fleeing to self-declared exile in Belgium and Switzerland. Years of protests, judicial proceedings and political flare-ups followed.
But Europe’s favorite secessionist telenovela appears to have come to an end — at least for now.
Last May, nationalist parties failed to secure a majority in Catalonia’s regional parliament for the first time in 30 years. Instead, voters backed 58-year-old Salvador Illa, a pro-unionist socialist politician who campaigned on social issues instead of separatism.
The bespectacled and soft-spoken Illa, who served as Spain’s health minister during the Covid crisis and is close to Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez, is often cast as a boring technocrat.
“What I want is to govern,” Illa said in an interview with POLITICO on his first trip to Brussels since his election.
By “governing,” the socialist leader said he meant shifting the focus in Catalonia away from the independence movement that has monopolized the political scene for decades, and instead focusing on straightforward policies to improve the quality of life in one of Spain’s most prosperous regions.
Illa stressed that he firmly defends “self-government for Catalonia,” but added that this should happen within a “plural and diverse Spain.”
By working with the national government in Madrid, he believes he can improve the region’s public-health system, railway infrastructure, public services and employment opportunities — issues he stresses are important to all of the region’s residents, regardless of their views on Catalan independence.
His objective is to “unite [and] pursue what unites Catalans,” he said.
Balancing act
But Illa may have trouble achieving his goals.
His minority government — which was sworn in the same day separatist leader Carles Puigdemont staged a dramatic return to Barcelona before returning to exile in August — is weak and depends on the support of one of the main independence parties, the Catalan Republican Left.
While secessionist parties no longer have a majority in the regional parliament, the Socialist leader knows well that independence remains popular in Catalonia.
But the movement is fragmented and plagued by infighting, allowing Illa to secure the support of one of the main independence parties — fracturing the movement’s common front.
Illa believes that closer collaboration with the EU can help dispel isolationist tendencies within the region. To that end, he’s keen to redefine Catalonia’s presence in Brussels.
Since 2004 the regional government has maintained a delegation just steps from the headquarters of the European Commission. During the past decade the space operated as a sort of embassy for the secessionist movement and promoted the pro-independence cause beyond Spain’s borders.
“There was not … the participation that I believe Catalonia should have,” he said, adding he now wants the territory to play an active role in EU institutions like the Committee of the Regions, which gives them a voice on the bloc’s big issues.
In a bid to change Catalonia’s image in Brussels, Illa recruited the seniormost Catalan official he could find in the EU institutions to lead the government’s foreign and EU department: Jaume Duch, former spokesperson and head of communications at the European Parliament.
“Catalonia does not want to present itself to Europe as a problem,” he said, but instead to make “positive contributions” in Brussels.
