The struggle for a Catalan republic: Rethinking the way forward Kacper Grass Platypus Review 103 | February 2018 THE EVENTS OF OCTOBER 2017 and the subsequent election held on December 21st have done little to resolve the issue of Catalan independence, which has now escalated into a regional and national crisis marked by political gridlock and polarization among the Catalan people. This polarization has taken a particular toll on the Catalan left as well as on the region’s labor movement, allowing the bourgeoisie to remain in power and further its own agenda by exploiting the issue while the Left remains fractionalized and at odds about the way forward. A historical analysis of the Catalan Left’s relationship with the independence movement from its origins to the present explains the state of affairs today and suggests a way forward, both for the Catalan Left as well as for the working class that depends on it. The origins of Catalan independence as a leftist movement The Catalan struggle for independence can be traced back to 1931, when Francesc Macià and Lluís Companys founded the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) following the death of Miguel Primo de Rivera and the collapse of his autocratic regime. Like many other republican parties that appeared in Spain at this crucial moment, the ERC was committed to socialist and anti-monarchist values. However, contrary to some of its counterparts from other regions of the country, the ERC’s nationalist tendencies distanced it from both the Soviet Union and the international socialist movement. In the period of political instability that followed, Macià was serving as the acting president of Catalonia and took advantage of the temporary power vacuum to proclaim the “Catalan Republic as a state of the