We can, citizens

If the Portuguese election result a couple of months ago was a touch complicated, tonight's Spanish election result is truly epic.  Once again, we have the conservatives emerging as the largest single party, but without any real prospect of forming a stable government in the absence of a deal with the socialists.  Unlike Portugal, however, this state of affairs has come about in spite of the combined centre-right forces having the slight upper hand in the parliamentary arithmetic.  If the preliminary results are correct, this is how it works out...

Right and centre-right : 178 seats
Left and centre-left : 172 seats

The reason why the centre-right majority is meaningless is that eight of those 178 seats will be held by a "separatist" Catalan party, which for obvious reasons is not about to reach an accommodation with the incumbent Madrid government.  So a more realistic way of looking at the result is this -

Right and centre-right : 163 seats
Left and centre-left : 172 seats
Catalan centre-right nationalists : 8 seats
Basque and Canarian centre-right nationalists/regionalists : 7 seats

I've no idea what attitude the Basque and Canarian centre-right take towards Mariano Rajoy, but even if you hypothetically assign those seven seats to the combined centre-right forces, the left still can't (quite) be outvoted.  So, on the face of it, it seems almost inevitable that the socialists will be involved in the next government - either as the junior partner in a grand coalition, or as the senior partner in a left-wing coalition involving Podemos and others.  The only possible alternative is that the current government might limp on for a few months on a caretaker basis until a new election can be held, but that would probably only happen if there is genuine deadlock in the negotiations.  Unfortunately, deadlock isn't inconceivable, because the socialists will need to cobble together an absolute majority (ie. 176 seats) to override any vetoes from the Senate, which remains firmly in the hands of the conservatives. 

Whatever arrangement is reached, it's already clear that this election won't in itself resolve the Catalan dispute, because the anti-"separatist" centre-right have the blocking minority they need to prevent any constitutional changes.  (The current constitution outrageously precludes even the theoretical possibility of Basque or Catalan independence.)

All the same, those of us with radical left sympathies should certainly keep our fingers crossed for a socialist-led coalition, because if that happens, there'll never have been a time when the radical left have held such influence within the European Union.  We'd have Podemos as junior coalition partners in Spain, Syriza as senior coalition partners in Greece, and a  Portuguese government that owes its position to a formal deal with the communists and the Left Bloc.

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The EU must stop accepting a 'this far and no farther' commitment to democracy as good enough

Although it's caused little more than a ripple, the announcement from the Spanish foreign minister that his country would have "nothing to say" about Scottish independence could scarcely be more significant. Since the late 1980s, the SNP has countered scaremongering about "isolation" with the promise that Scotland would remain firmly inside the European family after independence, and indeed would be a much less half-hearted participant in EU affairs than the UK has been. The latter point has become an even easier sell since David Cameron's petulant and pointless veto of a European treaty at the end of last year. But of course the success of the strategy has always hinged on the public's faith that an independent Scotland could freely choose to remain within the EU, and unionist parties have naturally been keen from the start to find ways of undermining that faith. The SNP's impeccable pro-European credentials would be of little use if enough doubt could be sowed about just how welcome an independent Scotland would actually be in the club. And the favourite piece of unionist scaremongering down the years? That Spain would veto our EU membership, on the grounds that it would encourage "separatism" in two of its own autonomous regions, Catalonia and the Basque Country. A Foreign Office source gently whispered that idea into the ears of a few journalists just last month, and with a typical display of the "Westminster is God" mindset, the London media lapped it up and earnestly reported it as if it was a direct quote from the Spanish government!

But it really doesn't matter what is said from now on - we have an authoritative statement from Spain, which can be used as an all-purpose response whenever this hoary old myth is raised. At a stroke, there can be no more room for doubt in the minds of the Scottish public that we can choose a European future. The mechanics of securing EU membership may still be open to debate, as indeed is the very desirability of full membership as opposed to the EU-lite option of staying within the single market via EFTA and the EEA. But the old unionist fantasy of Scotland being 'punished' by the civilised world for its confounded impudence, and set adrift in the North Atlantic without food, shelter or warmth, is now dead for ever.

So great news for us - but spare a thought for the Catalans and the Basques. Spain's pragmatic promotion of the idea that there are no parallels between its own regions and Scotland is essentially based on a piece of sophistry, ie. that 'separatism' is somehow consistent with the UK's constitutional doctrine, but not with Spain's. OK, the UK may not have a written constitution that explicitly states that the unity of the nation is "indissoluble", but the now universally-accepted principle that Scotland can choose its own destiny is a relatively new one. It came about as UK Prime Ministers from Harold Wilson onwards simply accepted the realities of a modern, democratised world that had moved on from colonialism. Whether Spain realises it or not, it's simply playing catch-up on this, rather than defending a timeless and quintessentially Spanish constitutional principle.

After all, what message does a constitutional provision that the nation is 'indissoluble' send to Catalan or Basque nationalists? Basically, that constitutional nationalism is a literal impossibility, and ultimately that non-constitutional methods are the only way of achieving what ought to be perfectly legitimate democratic objectives. It's the rough equivalent of Article 6 of the old Soviet constitution, which made clear that voters could choose absolutely any party they wanted, as long as that party was the Communist Party. The EU has long since moved on from the days where it would even flirt with the idea of admitting a one-party state (although Franco's Spain did apply to join the Common Market), so why on earth does it tolerate a member state which arrogantly tells people that the future of their own nation isn't a matter for them, and has been settled for all time by the text of the constitution? It presumably boils down to the fact that nobody in Brussels has been forced to confront this issue yet. But a short, sharp shock may be coming for the EU from the direction of Barcelona, and once it happens the rules of the game will surely have to change. In future, it must be a condition of EU membership that states adhere to all democratic principles, not just the easy ones. Nobody would deny that accepting the right of 'sub-national peoples' to decide their own future is a hard thing for large states such as Spain to do - but without that acceptance, democracy is a sham.

I'll leave you with a picture I took in Catalonia about eighteen months ago - if you look closely you'll see the word "Independencia" lovingly scrawled along the side of the pier. You don't see things like that at Ardrossan Harbour!

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And you'll fly over lands where your eyes can't find the end

Well, if I had any sense I would hang up my Eurovision prediction shoes at this point, but I don't think I'll be the only person feeling that way tonight! Although few anticipated Italy's runner-up spot, with the benefit of hindsight it's not hard to understand how it happened, because stylistically the song stood out an absolute mile. But Ukraine in fourth? I'm still scratching my head. OK, they're one of the countries who traditionally benefit from political voting and that was certainly the case tonight, but that can't be the whole of the explanation. It's hard to escape the conclusion that people were voting for the sand-artist rather than for the song or the singer.

Even though it wasn't the outcome I anticipated, I'm reasonably happy with it - at least the Azerbaijani song had a bit of charm and warmth about it, which is more than can be said for the typically formulaic Swedish offering. But it's interesting to see that Azerbaijan didn't win their semi-final (they were second behind Greece), so clearly there was nothing inevitable about the result. I was also really delighted when Italy pipped Sweden to second place with the very last vote cast. Hopefully this success should now cement Italy's place in the contest after a fourteen-year absence - although it has to be said that when they called it a day after 1997 it was off the back of an excellent fourth-place finish, so you just never know!

As I find myself saying at this point every year, it's undeniable that political voting continues to plague the contest. It probably didn't decide the winner this year, as all of the top-placed countries had natural allies (even Italy had San Marino and Malta), so it would have evened itself out to some extent. And we also know from Finland's victory a few years back that it's possible for countries with few allies to overcome the bias and win big. But there's no getting away from the fact that it's a significant disadvantage for some countries, and unquestionably affected the final rankings tonight. It's hard to see an obvious solution other than something very contrived such as giving each country a 'blacklist' of neighbours and friends they're not allowed to vote for. Even returning to a 100% jury vote wouldn't necessarily resolve the problem - Greece and Cyprus used to routinely swap twelve points every bit as much in the old days.

Incidentally, my one small criticism of Graham Norton (who in general was excellent again) is that I wish he would study a map of Europe before commentating on the voting. I couldn't believe he didn't pick up on the significance of Romania and Moldova voting for each other!

My own votes went to France and Spain - and funnily enough I think I might have done that even without my personal rule of only voting for songs not performed in English. I hadn't previously paid a huge amount of attention to the Spanish entry, partly because it wasn't involved in the semi-finals, but I completely fell in love with it tonight. Sad to see it didn't get the support it deserved - and the lowly ranking of Austria disappointed me a bit as well.

Last but not least, I'm really chuffed to say that this blog received the biggest number of visitors in its three-year history yesterday (ie. Saturday) as people landed here after searching for Eurovision predictions. Thanks to everyone for dropping by - I just wish I could have been more accurate for you! Ah well, at least I can cling to having got Denmark in the right place...

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An independent-minded pier

Interesting to read Stuart Dickson's post about the ongoing consultative referenda on Catalan independence, in which 96.7% of the electorate have thus far voted Yes (although presumably on figures like that there must have been a heavy boycott by natural No voters).

"Anyhoo, during our first couple of days, the only signs of rampant natism were passing by a couple of nationalist offices (CiU and JERC), and seeing a couple of JERC's bright red "Sí' a la independencia" posters. Being more familiar with the Basque tendency to splash nationalist paraphernalia all over the shop, I thought that this was rather a poor show."

Actually, I was in those parts myself last September, and I was astonished to see the word "Independencia" scrawled very artistically across a huge portion of one side of the pier at Blanes. I somehow can't imagine the Scottish national movement getting away with a similar enhancement of Wemyss Bay. Unfortunately, I didn't take a close-up picture, but if you're eagle-eyed you can spot it in the distance in this one (not quite sure what the archery and medieval costumes were in aid of) -

I was struck the whole week by how Catalan graffiti is in a different class to our own, both in terms of artistic merit and the seriousness of the message. There was quite a lot of it in Barcelona on the subjects of discrimination and racism. I kept meaning to take some photos, but never got round to it, so in the end I had to settle for this much more familiar looking effort. Still, you can't deny the neatness of the handwriting...

I was also amazed at how many Catalan flags were in evidence everywhere I went, although that may have been in honour of the national day -

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