Pro-split Catalan parties lead in regional election
Catalan BARCELONA, SPAIN — political parties that support independence from Spain were poised to regain a majority in Catalonia’s regional parliament, according to provisional results with more than 90 percent of votes counted Thursday.
Unless the results change after the final votes are counted, the three secessionist parties together have won enough votes for 70 seats in the 135-seat assembly.
However, the pro-union Citizens party looks set to become the biggest single party, with 35 seats in the parliament.
The result would mean that the pro-independence parties would once again get a chance to form a regional government, nearly two months after Spain dismissed the previous government following a unilateral declaration of independence by Catalan lawmakers.
Catalan voters turned out in force Thursday for a regional election seen as a crucial test of the powerful movement that wants Catalonia to split from Spain.
The vote was called by the Spanish government in an attempt to end the political crisis that erupted in October over a banned referendum on independence.
Opinion polls before the vote had predicted a close race between the separatist and unionist parties. Voters chose between parties who want Catalonia to remain part of Spain and those who want to continue the push for turning the northeastern region into an independent republic.
Catalonia’s election board said that 68.3 percent, or 3.75 million of 5.5 million eligible voters, had cast ballots by 6 p.m. (noon EST), more than 5 percentage points higher than in the last regional election in 2015. Surveys in recent weeks had predicted record turnout numbers.
The election was held under highly unusual circumstances, with several pro-independence leaders either jailed or in exile for their roles in staging the Oct. 1 independence vote that was declared illegal by Spain’s highest court. Former Catalan President Carles Puigdemont campaigned from Belgium, where he is evading a Spanish arrest warrant in a rebellion and sedition probe.
“It’s not normal, an election that takes place with candidates in prison and candidates in exile,” Puigdemont said in the Belgian capital. In a tweet, he thanked an 18-year-old woman who cast a vote on his behalf in a town near Barcelona.
Weeks of campaigning involved little debate about regional policy on issues such as public education, widening inequality and unemployment. At the heart of the battle instead was the recent independence push that led to Spain’s worst political crisis in decades.
Tensions have been high in Catalonia since the referendum, when Spanish police used rubber bullets and batons against voters who tried to block them from removing ballots from polling stations. Separatist regional lawmakers made a unilateral declaration of independence on Oct. 27, prompting Spain’s national government to take the dramatic step of firing the regional government and dissolving the Catalan parliament. Courts later ordered the arrest of the former Catalan leaders.
No incidents were reported during the election Thursday.
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy called the early election, which he is hoping will keep the separatists out of power. The strategy could backfire, however, if the election delivers a pro-independence majority of lawmakers in the Catalan parliament. Even so, Rajoy says Catalan independence would go against the Spanish Constitution and he refuses to accept the possibility. Senior EU officials have backed Rajoy, and no EU country has offered support for the separatists.