Thinking independently about Cataluña

AMBITION prevents Carme Chacon from revealing her true feelings about Catalan independence.

At present the former minister is torn two ways, not between Cataluña and Spain but the national PSOE socialist party and its Catalan version, the PSC. 

Chacon fruitlessly challenged Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba for the PSOE party leadership and presidential candidacy after Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero threw in the towel. 

Had she succeeded, the election results would have been the same because Spain was preparing for a massive PSOE punishment vote in November 2011.

But the now unpopular PP is building up for its own punishment vote and 2015 could be Chacon’s moment. 

Even the Americans thought she had a future when – seven months’ pregnant – she was appointed Defence minister in 2008.  She would grow into the post and was worth watching, the US ambassador in Madrid told Washington.

Catalan separatism will be Chacon’s stumbling block because the PSC no longer toes the official PSOE line that a Cataluña independence referendum must have the central government’s authorisation.

PSOE – PSC relations are taut and Chacon treads a tightrope, knowing that she still needs PSC backing to lead the PSOE. 

She and PSC general secretary Pere Navarro recently buried the hatchet, according to some sources and Carme Chacon could be on her way.  Whether to the Moncloa or merely a collision course with Rubalcaba remains to be seen.