Candidatura d'Unitat Popular
| Candidatura d'Unitat Popular candidacy for the unity of the people |
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|---|---|
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| Headquarters | Carrer Casp 180; Barcelona |
| newspaper | InfoCUP |
| Alignment |
Separatism , Socialism , Anti-Capitalism , Ecologism , Direct Democracy , Pan-Catalanism , Libertarian Communalism , EU Skepticism |
| Colours) |
Yellow red black white |
| Catalan Parliament |
4/135 |
| Spanish House of Representatives |
2/350 |
| Spanish Senate |
0/265 |
| Number of members | 1.927 |
| Website | cup.cat |
The Candidatura d'Unitat Popular ( Candidature of the People's Unity , CUP) is a Catalan party political alliance at the left-separatist end of the political spectrum in Spain .
Background / self-image
The CUP belongs to the left part of the party spectrum in Catalonia. In addition to left-alternative and anti-capitalist groups, there are also socialist and anarchist groups in the CUP. The party was founded on December 14, 1986 and has since performed its political work mainly at the local level. It has around 1,900 members. The party's headquarters are in Manresa (Bages). Their motto is: L'alternativa necessària ( Catalan for “the necessary alternative”). In its election manifesto, the CUP describes itself as a "grassroots political organization of national character, active on the entire territory of the Catalan countries and working for a state that is independent of Spain, socialist, ecologically sustainable, territorially balanced and free of any kind of patriarchal dominance" .
All Catalan-speaking sub-regions are designated as “ Catalan countries ”
- Spain ( Catalonia , Valencian Community , Balearic Islands , the so-called Franja de Ponent in Aragon and the Carxe region in the Murcia region)
- France ( Roussillon or Northern Catalonia )
- the Principality of Andorra
- and the Sardinian city of Alghero
designated.
The demands included free housing and water, plus free electricity. The CUP calls for the nationalization of the banks and a guaranteed minimum income for everyone.
The CUP did not run for the elections to the European Parliament in 2014 , on the grounds that the European Union was an “anti-democratic area”, “united in unbelief”, which forced “the privatization of public services” and “a debt dictatorship”. She did not run in 2019 either. The CUP wants Spain and independent Catalonia to leave the EU.
For the repeated Spanish parliamentary elections scheduled for November 10, 2019 , the CUP is also running for the first time in national elections. Their aim is to punish the current state regime, to make it difficult to form a government in Spain and thus to prevent a government program that would maintain the status quo between the state and Catalonia.
Organization and principles of decision making
The party advocates direct democracy and comprehensive citizen participation in the political process in the sense of a grassroots democratic discourse based on deliberative democracy . It also cultivates this kind of political discourse internally and is therefore a party without leadership positions. All decisions are made collectively and democratically.
The organization at the communal level takes place through local assemblies (Assemblees Locals), to which every member can come, discuss and vote on the positions to be represented. The local assemblies are completely autonomous. Territorial assemblies (Assemblees Territorials) exist to coordinate the local action groups. These in turn send delegates to the so-called Political Council (Consell Polític), which coordinates the policy of the CUP at the national level. There is a party secretariat currently consisting of 13 people, which is responsible for day-to-day business but has no political powers. The highest decision-making body is the National General Assembly. In this respect, the party resembles the German Pirate Party in terms of its internal structure and orientation towards grassroots democratic principles , but its program has been further developed and, after about 30 years of existence, it is more well-coordinated.
The CUP fights for unconditional transparency and has committed itself to combating the corruption that is widespread in the rest of Spain and in the Catalan countries. The party advocates equal opportunities and non-discrimination, inclusion and participation for all. In its own understanding it is liberal and pluralistic, social and libertarian.
Previous electoral successes
Since the 1980s, the CUP has been represented in a large number of municipal parliaments with members (regidors). Since the local elections in May 2015, it has had 385 regidors (382 of them in Catalonia and 3 in the Valencia region). The CUP is involved in 18 coalition governments at the municipal level and provides the mayor of 15 other municipalities.
General election in Catalonia 2012
For the first time in the parliamentary elections in Catalonia in 2012 , the CUP entered with its own list at a higher political level and won three seats (3.47%) from scratch. This is particularly noteworthy in that the regionalized electoral system (using the D'Hondt procedure ) favors large parties in the weighting of votes . The MPs are elected in four constituencies (the provinces):
- 85 in the constituency of Barcelona ,
- 17 in the constituency of Girona ,
- 15 in the constituency of Lleida and
- 18 in the constituency of Tarragona .
The allocation of mandates takes place in the D'Hondt procedure at electoral district level, whereby only parties are taken into account that have achieved at least 3% of the votes in the respective constituency. In the smallest constituency of Lleida, at least around 6% of the votes are required to be able to win one of the 15 seats. In the constituency of Barcelona (85 seats), on the other hand, around 1.2% would be sufficient, but this is prevented by the 3 percent hurdle . Small parties in rural regions are arithmetically less likely to receive mandates , even if they cross the 3 percent hurdle, while in urban regions they are de facto discriminated against if they do not achieve at least 3% nationwide.
General election in Catalonia 2015
For the parliamentary elections in Catalonia 2015 , which took place on September 27, 2015, the participation of the CUP in a non-partisan list for the independence of Catalonia ( Junts pel Sí / Together for Yes) was under discussion for a long time. In particular, the proponents of a non-partisan list of civil society appealed to all political forces striving for independence to form such a joint list.
Ideological and left-right-discussion tensions, which the participation of the CUP in such a bipartisan list would have brought with it, finally induced the CUP to come up with its own list for these elections; the reason: "The plurality of Catalonia does not fit into a (single) list" (in this case a single list for the independence of Catalonia from Spain). Thus, with the bourgeois social democratic list Junts pel Sí and the list of the CUP, two lists stood in the elections on September 27, 2015, which advocate the independence of Catalonia from Spain. The CUP achieved 10 mandates with a voting share of 8.21%. In this way, the CUP held a decisive role in parliament as the decisive majority funder for the secessionist political course of Prime Minister Carles Puigdemont ; In the new parliamentary elections in December 2017, the number of MPs decreased to 4, but the CUP remained the decisive factor for a secessionist majority in the regional parliament.
Spanish general election November 2019
For the first time, the CUP competed at the state level in the repeated Spanish parliamentary elections in November 2019 , which took place on November 10, 2019. It made it into parliament straight away and now has two members in Congress. You benefited from it u. a. the renouncement of the left-wing Catalan electoral alliance Front Republicà to run in these repeated parliamentary elections. In addition, the police violence used in the wake of the protests over the condemnation of the Catalan political leaders and the general political polarization in Spain led to their success.
Web links
- Party website (Catalan)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Archive link ( Memento of the original from March 12, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ http://cup.cat/qui-som
- ↑ http://marx21.de/27-11-12-katalonien/
- ↑ http://cup.cat/qui-som
- ^ Separatists are ruining Catalonia's creditworthiness , FAZ, October 12, 2015
- ↑ La CUP defensa la sortida de la UE (The CUP defends the (demand for) exit from the EU) , ARA, October 15, 2017
- ↑ “Anem al Congrés a generar inestabilitat i ingovernabilitat” (We go to Congress to create instability and ungovernability) , ARA, September 30, 2019
- ↑ http://m.ara.cat/tema_del_dia/CUP-despenja-perque-pluralitat-llista_0_1394260631.html , from July 15, 2015
