Catalonia celebrates this Sunday important elections in which the socialists of the president of the Spanish government, Pedro Sánchez, They seek to end the independence domination in this key region by imposing themselves on Carles Puigdemont, leader of the 2017 secessionist attempt.
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With around 8 million inhabitants, this rich community in the northeast of Spain, one of the economic and industrial engines of the country, votes to elect the 135 deputies of its regional Parliament, who is the one who elects the president of the regional government.
The 2,695 voting points opened their doors at 09:00 local time to begin voting day. At 1 pm local time, 26.89% of voters had already voted, about four points above the February 2021 electionsstill marked by the covid-19 pandemic.
The polls point to pacts to be able to govern, with a vote projection that places the socialist party first, but without a sufficient majority, followed by the independentists of Junts and Esquerra Republicana de Cataluña, which governs the region until now.
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Junts is the party of Carles Puigdemont, who presided over the Catalan Government when the illegal unilateral declaration of independence took place in 2017, after which he fled from Spanish Justice and is now in France.
The polls place behind them the right-wing Vox, the anti-capitalist CUP, the liberal Ciudadanos, who may be left out of the regional Parliament, and the conservative Popular Party.
“We are opening a new decisive stage in Catalonia,” said the socialist candidate, Salvador Illa, after casting his vote in a town near Barcelona.
Why is the result decisive for Pedro Sánchez?
The result will influence Spanish politics, since The head of the central Executive, the socialist Pedro Sánchez, needs the Catalan independentists to govern Spain represented in the national Parliament.
Strong results in Catalonia would allow him to relaunch a legislature complicated by the tough opposition from the right and for the opening of a judicial investigation against his wife, after which he even considered resigning two weeks ago.
Likewise, They would be a boost to the “reunion” strategy that he has opted for since his arrival to the presidency of the Spanish government in 2018, and that led him to approve measures such as the pardon of separatist leaders sentenced to prison.
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“People don’t know where to go. There is a lot of pro-independence vote that is a little disconcerted, and then there is the vote of the more state-based parties that are surely more convinced,” said Xavier Cusí, a 51-year-old bank employee, as he left to vote at a polling station in Barcelona.
The amnesty law, which the Spanish Parliament must definitively approve in the coming weeks, will open the door for Puigdemont to return to Spain, six and a half years after his flight to Belgium to evade Spanish justice.
His training, Together for Catalonia, she is second in the polls behind the socialists and Puigdemont hopes to complete a “comeback” that allows him to make a triumphant return as regional president, as soon as the amnesty is approved. If he does not succeed, he has already advanced his intention to retire from local politics.
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Weighed down by the divisions and disenchantment of some sectors, the calculations in the pro-independence camp are, however, complex.
Independence, divided
“They can’t agree even though they are almost from the same union, all Catalans,” lamented Anna Trullols, an 80-year-old pro-independence voter at the doors of a polling station in Barcelona.
In the last regional elections, in 2021, The secessionist bloc added 74 of the 135 seats in the regional Parliament, making Illa’s victory in votes sterile, who achieved 33.
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But in the last Spanish legislative elections on July 23, the socialists gained strength in Catalonia in the face of a marked separatist decline, especially from ERC.
Nor does the horizon look placid for the socialists. The polls give them about forty deputies, so Illa would also have to find allies to reach the 68 seats of the absolute majority.
One of the possibilities is an alliance of the socialists with the extreme left, members of the government at the national level, and ERC, in what would mean breaking almost a decade of collaboration of the independence bloc.
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