Polls show that the Socialists will achieve a clear victory on Sunday, but without an absolute majority, and that the second most voted party will be Together for Catalonia (JxCat), of the former autonomous president Carles Puigdemont, who led the unilateral declaration of independence in 2017 and has lived in Belgium since then to escape justice. While waiting for an amnesty law that he negotiated with the Socialists to be definitively approved and come into force, Puigdemont is a candidate in these elections and could once again become president of the regional government of Catalonia (Generalitat) if the pro-independence parties together have a majority in parliament and unite once more to invest a Catalan nationalist executive. However, this year, the polls estimate that this absolute pro-independence majority may not materialise, so the post-election scenario is uncertain. Both Carles Puigdemont and the Socialist candidate, Salvador Illa, Spain's Minister of Health in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, have gained ground in recent weeks, according to the evolution of the polls, to the detriment of the current regional president, Pere Aragonès, of the also pro-independence Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), who appears in third place in the studies. Almost seven years after a unilateral declaration of independence, the suspension of autonomy by the institutions of the Spanish State, the arrest and imprisonment of separatists and violent protests in the streets, the Socialists appear for the first time as clear winners of regional elections, ahead of the two major pro-independence parties. Leading the Government of Spain since 2018, the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) of Pedro Sánchez granted pardons to the convicted separatists, changed the penal code to eliminate the crime of sedition that had led them to prison and of which others were accused (such as Puigdemont) and has now moved forward with an amnesty. These measures were negotiated with the ERC - which has made all of Sánchez's governments viable since 2018 - and, in the case of the amnesty, also with Puigdemont's JxCat, on which he also came to depend last year to remain in office. In public and official discourse, the PSOE justifies these measures of "dejudicialisation of a political conflict" - which their opponents call concessions to the pro-independence supporters - as the necessary path to recover coexistence in Catalonia and between the region and the rest of Spain and, thus, open a new stage. "The position of the Socialists was interesting and I think it was successful, the idea that the 'process' [attempt at independence] is over, it's done, and now we're going to talk about policies and we're leaving independence behind," Catalan political scientist Oriol Bartomeus of the Autonomous University of Barcelona explained to Lusa. This "idea of overcoming the pro-independence conflict" was already "the argument of the PSC [Socialist Party of Catalonia] in the previous elections, in 2021, but then it didn't stick, and now it does," added the professor of Political Science, for whom the Socialists also benefit, in these elections, from the "general situation in Spain", with a Popular Party (PP) "very much on the right" that mobilises the PSOE electorate. Oriol Bartomeus added an "Illa factor", in reference to the Socialist candidate, who has good popularity and credibility ratings. Salvador Illa, 58, was already a candidate in the previous regional elections and was also the most voted, but tied in number of deputies with the ERC and the pro-independence alliance kept him out of power. In these three years, according to Catalan analyst and columnist Josep Martí Blanch, "he did well", made "a calm opposition", even "helped" the ERC to approve budgets, always "without belittling or insulting the pro-independence movement". "There are many people, including in moderate nationalism, who see him as someone capable of finishing stabilising Catalonia and who deserves a vote of confidence," Josep Martí Blanch, a former journalist and former head of communication for the regional governments of nationalist Artur Más (2010 to 2016, centre-right), explained to Lusa. Josep Martí Blanch shares the opinion that the Socialists are "capitalising on the pardons" and the policy for Catalonia of recent years, which in the rest of Spain generates "criticism and incomprehension". "But in Catalonia, in terms of facts, as we are better off than we were a few years ago, the Socialist Party is receiving this prize," he said. The path of dialogue with the pro-independence supporters to recover coexistence in Catalonia that the PSOE insists so much on was only possible because it had the ERC as an interlocutor on the other side since 2018. However, unlike the Socialists, the Republican Left does not capitalise on this decision and is, in the words of Josep Martí Blanch, a Puigdemont "resurrected in a big way" last year, for having elected seven decisive deputies for the reappointment of Sánchez, who will apparently reap the rewards of the amnesty agreement from which he himself expects to benefit soon. "The Socialists managed to make a break with the 'process', saying that it is the past, but the Republican Left failed to do so. It tried, but failed, and remained on middle ground," explained Oriol Bartomeus, for whom the figure of Puigdemont, who "continues with the mystique of confrontation", has once again mobilised the electorate, unlike the ERC. In addition, Josep Martí Blanch added, the assessment of the ERC's management at the head of the regional government in the last legislature is not positive, with criticism of the way it dealt with the drought (the region's worst in history and the greatest concern of Catalans, according to several studies) and with much media impact on the drop in the educational results of Catalan students and the problems in primary health services. However, since the ERC is, in Josep Martí Blanch's metaphor, "a party with two souls", one leftist and the other pro-independence, it will have the key to the next Catalan government in its hands, being able to ally itself with both the Socialists and Puigdemont, or also block any solution, paving the way for the repetition of the elections. For now, the ERC has not closed the door to any of the scenarios. Read Also: EU Advocate General condemns veto on Puigdemont in the EP in 2019 (Portuguese version)