Polling stations opened this Sunday (12) in Catalonia, where around 5.7 million voters are eligible to participate in the election in this important region in Spanish politics.
The 2,695 voting locations opened their doors at 9am (local time, 4am Brasília) to start the voting day until 8pm (local time, 3pm Brasília). The elections decide the 135 seats in the Parliament of Catalonia in the next legislature, which is the one that elects the president of the regional government.
Among the new features of the elections, the use of artificial intelligence at polling stations to speed up the transmission of vote counts stands out.
Polls indicate that some pacts were made to be able to govern, with a projection of votes that puts the socialist party in first place, but without a sufficient majority, followed by the independentists of Juntos pela Catalonia (JxCaT) and the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) , which governs the region until now.
JxCaT is the party of Carles Puigdemont, who presided over the Catalan government when the illegal unilateral declaration of independence occurred in 2017, after which he fled Spanish justice and is now in France.
The polls put behind them the right-wing Vox, the Popular Union Candidacy (CUP), the liberal Ciudadanos, who could be left out of the regional Parliament, and the conservative Popular Party.
The result will influence Spanish politics, since the head of the Spanish government, the socialist Pedro Sánchez, needs the Catalan independentists represented in the national Parliament to govern the country.
Sánchez was re-elected president in 2023 thanks to parliamentary agreements, notably one with Catalan sovereigntists. (With EFE Agency)
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