Estefanía Molina is an exceptionally acute commentator on Spanish and especially Catalan politics but I think she’s wrong here. She argues that it’s not clear what exactly Junts stands for and rejects labelling it as far right because it has voted for one or two economically progressive measures.
What do Reform in the UK, the LePenists in France, Fratelli in Italy, the AfD in Germany all stand for? A clear dividing line between the true and false members of the national community and economic benefits for the former at the expense of the latter.
And that’s exactly what Junts stands for too; the belief that the real Catalans, a small subset of the population of Catalonia, are oppressed by the demands of foreigners (people in the rest of Spain) and immigrants (Catalans that don’t share Junts’s ideology) and that national survival depends on secession. Once free from this “oppression “ the true Catalans will prosper mightily and live happily ever after. The similarities with the most prominent far right parties in Europe are obvious. Of course, there are differences too especially in relation to Lgbt and related identity issues on which Junts is liberal but the overall point stands.
Estefanía might say that Junts’s real political aims point towards greater autonomy within Spain and that secession is a busted flush after the failure of the 2017 “referendum”. Totally correct but that’s not the ideological frame it lives in and selling to the voters in Catalonia.
If Junts again forms a government with ERC after the May election its problem won’t be so much what to be as what to do; how to achieve autonomist aims clothed in the rhetoric of national identity and separation. The conservative Basque nationalists in the PNV are past masters at this but there’s no sign of Puigdemont or anyone else in Junts having the required level of political skill.