Six years after plunging Spain into its worst political crisis in decades, Catalonia’s separatist parties risk losing their grip on power in the northeast region after the pro-union Socialist Party secured a historic result in Sunday’s elections.
The four pro-independence parties, led by former regional president Carles Puigdemont’s Ensemble party, are expected to win a total of 61 seats, according to an almost complete vote count. This is a far cry from the key figure of 68 seats needed to obtain a majority in the chamber.
The Socialists led by former Health Minister Salvador Illa enjoyed their best result in the Catalan elections, winning 42 seats, up from 33 in 2021, when they also won barely the most votes but fell short. to form a government. It was the first time that the Socialists were ahead in a Catalan election, both in terms of votes and seats won.
“Catalonia has decided to open a new era,” Illa told her delighted supporters at her party headquarters. “Catalan voters have decided that the Socialist Party will lead this new era and I intend to become the next president of Catalonia.”
Illa led Spain’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic before Sánchez sent him back to Barcelona to lead his party. The 58-year-old Illa’s calm tone and focus on social issues convinced many voters that it was time for change after years of separatists calling for a severing of century-old ties with the rest of Spain.
Sánchez congratulated Illa on the X platform for the “historic result”.
The Socialists will need to win the support of other parties to put Illa in charge. Reaching agreements in the coming days and even weeks will be essential to forming a government. Neither a hung parliament nor new elections are out of the question.
But Illa still has a way to go to reach the target of 68 seats. The Socialists are already forming a coalition government in Madrid with the Sumar party, which now has six seats in the Catalan Parliament. But the hardest part will be to seduce a left-wing party from the separatist camp.
Regardless of these negotiations, Illa’s rise should bode well for Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and the Socialists ahead of next month’s European Parliament elections.
Separatists have occupied Barcelona’s regional government since 2012 and have won a majority in four consecutive regional elections. But polls and July’s national election showed that support for secession has declined since Puigdemont led an illegal – and futile – separatist attempt in 2017, which led hundreds of businesses and Catalonia’s main banks to leave the region.
“The candidacy that I led had a good result, we are the only pro-independence force to increase in votes and seats, and we assume the responsibility that this implies,” Puigdemont said. “But this is not enough to compensate for the losses of other separatist parties.”
Since then, Sánchez’s socialists have spent major political capital to reduce tensions in Catalonia, including pardoning imprisoned leading separatists and pushing through an amnesty for Puigdemont and hundreds of others.
The Socialists’ victory “is due to many factors that will have to be analyzed, but one of these factors is the policies and leadership of the Spanish government and Pedro Sánchez,” Illa said.
Puigdemont’s Ensemble party reestablished leadership of the separatist camp with 35 seats, compared to 32 three years ago. He fled Spain after the 2017 secession attempt and led his campaign from the south of France, pledging to return home when lawmakers meet to elect a new regional president in the coming weeks.
Puigdemont’s flight from Spain became a legend among his supporters and a huge source of embarrassment for Spanish law enforcement. He recently denied during the campaign that he hid in the trunk of a car to avoid detection while crossing the border during a legal crackdown that landed several of his acolytes in prison until for the Sánchez government to pardon them.
Now, the only way Puigdemont could keep the separatists in government would depend on the unlikely possibility of a deal with Sánchez guaranteeing separatist support for his national government in Madrid in exchange for Illa reciprocating the separatists in Barcelona.
The Republican Left of Catalonia of the current regional president Father Aragonès fell from 33 to 20 seats. But the left-wing separatist party, which has governed in a minority during a record drought, could be key to Illa’s hopes, even if it would force him to break with the pro-secession bloc.
The Popular Party, which is the largest party in Spain’s national parliament where it leads the opposition, jumped from three to 15 seats.
Spain’s far-right ultra-nationalist Vox party retained its 11 seats, while at the other end of the spectrum, the far-left pro-secession party won four, up from nine.
A far-right pro-secessionist party called the Catalan Alliance, which denounces illegal immigration as well as the Spanish state, will enter the House for the first time with two seats.
“We have seen that Catalonia is not immune to the far-right reactionary wave sweeping across Europe,” said Aragonés, the outgoing regional president.
It is currently the devastating drought, not independence, that is Catalans’ main concern, according to the latest survey from the Catalan Public Opinion Office.
The opinion bureau reported that 50% of Catalans are against independence, while 42% are in favor, meaning support for independence has fallen to 2012 levels. When Puigdemont left in 2017, 49% were in favor of independence and 43% were against.
More than 3.1 million people voted, with a turnout of 57%. Thousands of voters potentially struggled to reach their polling stations when Catalonia’s commuter rail service had to close several train lines after what authorities said was the theft of copper cables from a railway facility near Barcelona.
News Source : www.nbcnews.com
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