The Popular Unity Candidacy joins a line of far-left movements seizing the political momentum in Europe, from Greece's ruling Syriza party and Spain's own far-left Podemos movement to the shock emergence last week of hardcore socialist Jeremy Corbyn as leader of Britain's Labour Party. Catalans vote Sunday in regional parliamentary elections that the breakaway camp hopes will give them a mandate to put their region on a path toward independence — a goal the Madrid central government says would be illegal. Catalans, he said in an interview with The Associated Press, need to claim their sovereignty as a nation from a Spanish state he insists has little respect for Catalonia and is an enthusiastic participant in a global capitalist economy he labels as "a war machine that robs, kills and lies." [...] he said CUP owes most of its identity to Catalonia's own history of workers and leftist movements, including 1930s radicals from pre-dictatorship Catalonia — when anarchists, communists and militant workers unions were among those who fought a losing 1936-39 war against Francisco Franco's fascist forces. After earning a reputation as a gifted debater in parliament, Fernandez and CUP's radical rhetoric have struck a note with pro-independence Catalans who are angry about the languishing economy and firm in their belief that Catalonia does not get back what it pays in taxes to Madrid. In Spain, crushing austerity measures, a 22 percent unemployment rate and prominent corruption cases involving politicians from Catalonia and across Spain "has been the perfect storm, and the crisis has really helped" CUP, said Antonio Barroso, a London-based analyst at the Teneo Intelligence political risk consultancy.
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