What links an anarchist youth group, a conservative party of free marketeers and a left-wing party committed instead to enhancing the welfare state?
The answer lies in the Catalan independence movement, which in the last seven years has morphed from a marginal force into a genuine threat to Spain’s territorial integrity, largely through a marriage of convenience among several unlikely bedfellows.
If this separatist alliance sounds fragile, unwieldy and paradoxical, that’s because it is.
The movement has “nothing to do with the far-right nationalism that we see almost everywhere else in Europe, doesn’t have any guru or strong leader, but it has instead something to do with almost every other ideology you could name,” said Josep Ramoneda, a political columnist and philosopher.
“That’s both its greatest strength, because it’s a movement that is really transversal, and its greatest weakness,” Mr. Ramoneda said. “Because it’s so easy to divide and disintegrate once you discuss anything other than the goal of independence in itself.”
And it fell under more pressure than ever on Monday, as the alliance’s different factions debated into the night about whether and how to make a long-promised but long-delayed declaration of independence. It is now meant to be announced at some point on Tuesday.
The decision was complicated further on Monday by a stark warning from a spokesman for the governing party of Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy of Spain that
The separatists must now decide whether to declare independence despite the resistance of Madrid and of leading politicians in the European Union. Chancellor Angela Merkel underscored Germany’s support for a united Spain in a weekend phone conversation with Mr. Rajoy.
The foundations of the independence movement have been shaky from the start. To achieve a pro-independence majority in the Catalan Parliament in 2015, the largest political group at the time – the conservative and recently renamed Catalan European Democratic Party – ran on a joint election platform with its main left-wing rival, as well as with a minor Christian democratic party and a small group of social democrats.
This odd union was supported by some prominent Catalans like Pep Guardiola, a celebrated soccer coach, as well as the two main citizens movements that have organized mass street rallies in favor of independence since 2012.
But the separatist coalition fell short of a parliamentary majority, allowing a small and leaderless far-left party, Popular Unity Candidacy, to step in and play the role of kingmaker in a Catalan Parliament dominated by separatists. The party is determined to secede swiftly, but disagrees profoundly with other separatists on how to then shape a new Catalan republic, starting with its rejection of the euro as a currency.
The alliance is facing a major test on Tuesday, when separatist lawmakers are expected to vote on a unilateral declaration of independence.
Hard-line and far-left separatists want a decisive and rapid break from Mr. Rajoy’s national government, following the highly controversial Catalan referendum on Oct. 1 that had been suspended by Spain’s constitutional court.
But Mr. Puigdemont wants to keep on board the more moderate representatives of his own party, some of whom have grown wary about recent announcements of a corporate exodus from Catalonia. Ada Colau, the left-wing mayor of Barcelona, also called on Monday on both Mr. Puigdemont and Mr. Rajoy to take a step back rather than escalate the crisis.
The situation “is perhaps a little bit curious,” said Jordi Cuixart, the head of Omnium Cultural, one of the two citizens associations that has been organizing the separatist rallies. “The pro-independence movement has all different social sensibilities – from left to right, including pro-liberal, socialist and communist.”
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