Catalonia
Projections: Separatists lose parliamentary majority
A man casts his vote for the regional elections at a polling station. photo
© Emilio Morenatti/AP/dpa
A new parliament was elected in Catalonia. The future of the conflict-ridden Spanish region seems to be completely open after the vote.
The separatist parties won the early parliamentary elections in the Spanish region According to projections, Catalonia has lost its parliamentary majority. After around 90 percent of the votes were counted, the parties only got 62 of the 135 parliamentary seats. The big winner of Sunday’s election was the Socialist Party, which gained nine seats and became by far the strongest force. Forecasts based on post-election polls published immediately after the polls closed had still predicted a majority for the separatists.
According to these projections by the TV station RTVE, the Socialists with their leading candidate Salvador Illa were able to improve from 33 seats to 41. The separatist former head of government Carles Puigdemont and his party Junts won 36 seats, four more than in the previous election in 2021. The previous head of government, Pere Aragonès, who was also separatist, and his left-wing party ERC fell from 33 seats to just 20.
Spain’s largest opposition party, the conservative PP, which has traditionally had a difficult time in Catalonia, improved significantly by eleven seats to now 14. The right-wing populist Vox maintained its result with eleven seats. The left-wing alternative alliance Comuns-Sumar, which governs in Madrid together with the Socialists, got six seats (minus 2), the left-wing separatist CUP fell to four seats (minus 5) and the new, far-right separatist Alianca Catalana sent two representatives to the parliament in Barcelona.