26.05.2014 - 02:56
It’s been 78 years since ERC has celebrated an electoral victory like the one it won on May 25th. A victory that the ERC president, Oriol Junqueras, said he would use to “further the sovereignty process and the November 9th referendum”. Junqueras guaranteed the “institutional stability” of the Catalan government and predicted that the results of ERC and the other parties that defend the referendum means “one more step towards independence”. The 400 supporters gathered in the Hotel Catalonia Ramblas were euphoric as they followed the returns. The party list leader Josep-Maria Terricabras pointed out that in addition, the turnout in Catalonia was, for the first time in an EU election, higher than in the Spanish State.
“Today, on the eve of the November 9th referendum, we have taken one more step on the road to freedom and toward independence,” said Junqueras, who was calm, but firm, despite the buzzing excitement of the audience before him. ERC was the winner in the elections and will use the results “responsibly” to guarantee the “institutional stability” that the country needs in order to hold the independence referendum, he continued.
The ERC president’s speech included almost no references to his party’s victory. Instead, he spoke about the country and shared the good results with the other pro-independence forces with whom his party was competing for seats in the European Parliament (CiU and ICV-EUiA). “Right now, we are more helpful than we were yesterday, because the sum of those of us who are committed to the referendum is bigger than ever,” he exclaimed.
The ERC leader addressed even those who did not put their trust in Esquerra or in any other pro-independence party in order to promise them that the independence movement aims to include them as well. “We understand your prejudices, misgivings, and fears. And we want you to know that we will take them on as our own,” he said.
This “eve” of November 9th will go down in ERC’s history as the first electoral victory since the restoration of democracy. Now six months begin of “continuous campaigning” as Junqueras said in the final campaign rally, that will go by “really quickly”. “The happy nights will fly by. Then we’ll be called to keep working courageously, prudently, efficiently, modestly, and enthusiastically,” he said.
Junqueras was the last to speak on Sunday night, after the two new Members of the European Parliament for ERC came up to the podium, Josep-Maria Terricabras and Ernest Maragall. Terricabras celebrated that the turnout in Catalonia had exceeded the Spanish average in a EU election for the first time and was four points higher than the European average. According to him, this was a demonstration of a commitment to the EU and the ERC candidate trusted it would be interpreted as such by the EU institutions. The new MEP-elect also referred to the sum of the pro-referendum forces (55% of the votes) and made a commitment to work hard in Brussels to win the causes that seem “lost”.
For his part, Maragall said that these elections augur a future majority in the Catalan Government. The former Minister of Education began his speech by saying, “Long Live ERC” and “Long Live NECat (his own party)” and was roundly applauded by the audience. In addition, with a very serious voice, he remarked that the work to get to this point had started many years before. “With Macià, with Companys [two former presidents of Catalonia] and also with Pasqual Maragall [former Mayor of Barcelona and Catalan President, as well as Ernest Maragall’s brother],” he exclaimed, as the crowd burst into applause and cries of “President!” and turned its attention to the former president, who, once again, had decided to join his brother on such a special evening.
While these are clearly the best EU election results in the history of the ERC, they are also its best results ever. In Catalonia, ERC received more than 590,000 votes (in 2006 with Carod-Rovira as a candidate, they received 540,000 in Catalan Parliament elections) and with 629,000 votes in the whole of the Spanish State, they surpassed the results they had achieved with any other Basque or Galician parties in previous coalitions.
