In the event, in March 2017 Mas was barred from public office for two years by a court in Barcelona for organizing an illegal vote in defiance of the Spanish courts. He was also fined 36,500 euros. In February 2012, in an interview to "La Vanguardia", Mas made a statement saying that "the cultural DNA of Catalans is intertwined with our long belonging to the Franco-Germanic world. Catalonia, after all, long belonged to the Marca Hispanica and its capital was Aachen, the heart of the Carolingian Empire. Something must endure in our DNA, because we Catalans have an umbilical cord that makes us more Germanic than Roman." Mas espouses the vision that "Spain can only become a "full" nation if Catalonia ceases to be a part of it". As a result of the political instability resulting from the referendum issue, Mas called a second consecutive snap election. Due to internal tensions within the coalition regarding the separatist turn led by Mas, CDC and Unió did not agree to reform CiU, hence putting an end to 37 years of cooperation between both parties. Instead, CDC joined forces with ERC in Junts pel Sí, a novel coalition which made public that Mas was going to be its candidate for the presidency, despite not being headed by him (as a result of balance of power negotiations within the coalition, Mas was placed fourth in the electoral ticket). The new coalition attained 62 seats, failing to secure an absolute majority. Unlike the previous election in 2012, support from other parties in the regional parliament could not be taken for granted in 2015, because ERC, which had previously supported CiU's government, had joined CDC in the Junts pel Sí coalition. The only prospective partner willing to negotiate with Junts pel Sí was the far-left separatist party Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP). After a lengthy period of negotiations started just after the election took place on September 27, Mas was vetoed by the CUP. In January 2016, after three months of what was defined as "rancorous infighting" in the separatist camp, Mas eventually stepped down at the eleventh hour from his candidature for the presidency in order to allow a government to be formed and a third consecutive snap election to be avoided. At that point, Mas also resigned from his seat in the parliament, remarking that he would place his “personal efforts in rebuilding what Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya (CDC) means and represents in Catalonia”.