Catalonia’s governing coalition fell apart on Friday night as a disagreement over the difficulty of pushing for independence prompted one member of the alliance to resign in disgust.
The government’s future in one of Spain’s economic powerhouses has been thrown into doubt by the move, but the region’s president has rejected the possibility of new elections and pledged to rule in a minority.
The vote to drop the coalition cemented a split within the independence movement, which was united by a disputed 2017 referendum on secession but has since splintered due to clashes over how to keep fighting.
The rift was sparked by Together for Catalonia, the coalition’s junior partner, whose members voted 56 to 42 percent to resign over a sense that Catalonia’s president Pere Aragonès was not doing enough. for separatism.
Laura Borras, president of Ensemble, which takes a hard-line approach to secession, said after the vote that Aragonès had “lost democratic legitimacy” and failed as coalition leader.
“We will work to revive independence,” she said. “The deputies have not only decided to leave the government, but we want to recover the leadership of this country.”
Aragonès, a pro-independence moderate who has angered Ensemble by turning to the central government to resolve disputes, said: “Citizens are not served by abandoning their responsibilities. We will not abandon the public in complicated times like the current one.
He said he would announce a new government formation in the coming days.
The referendum five years ago, which was rejected by Madrid and declared illegal by Spain’s top court, sparked the country’s worst political crisis in decades.
Pedro Sánchez, the Spanish Prime Minister who took part in the talks with Aragonès, said on Friday: “In these difficult and complex times, the stability of governments is essential. . . I support stability, in this case of the government of Catalonia.
Aragonès’ Catalan Republican Left (ERC) controls just 33 of the 135 seats in the regional parliament, leaving him with an uphill battle to pass legislation, including a new budget to address the cost of energy crisis. life.
“We continue to govern, seeking to build alliances to move the country forward,” Aragonès said.
Together’s leadership was itself split on whether to leave government, reflecting the fine gradations of opinion within the independence movement.
Aragonès and other political leaders had previously signaled they believed inflation and the energy crisis made it the wrong time for new elections.
The coalition crisis began last week when Aragonès sacked his vice-president Jordi Puigneró, Together’s top official in government, after the party threatened to call a vote of confidence against him.
Ensemble reacted by calling a ballot of its members on its future on Thursday and Friday.
During the 2017 independence vote, the Catalan government said 90% of the 2.3 million votes cast were for independence, but only around 40% of eligible voters turned out.
The latest polls indicate that a majority of Catalans do not want to separate from Spain: 52% of people were against independence and 41% for, according to a survey carried out in September by the Center d’Estudis d’Opinió, the authority Catalan Polling Agency.