In Catalonia, a high-stakes vote for PM, Puigdemont
Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s Socialists hope to seize power in Spain’s Catalonia region in elections on Sunday, to prove its appeasement strategy has more appeal than the separatist agenda of Carles Puigdemont.
This wealthy northeastern region of some eight million people votes on Sunday to elect deputies to its 135-seat regional Parliament.
Opinion polls suggest Mr. Sanchez’s Socialists are well ahead of Mr. Puigdemont’s hardline separatist JxCat and its rival ERC, led by current regional leader Pere Aragones.
Mr. Puigdemont, 61, was Catalan leader at the time of the failed independence bid in October 2017 which sparked Spain’s worst political crisis in decades.
Despite eeing Spain to avoid prosecution, he has remained active in the region’s politics, leading JxCat from Belgium. He is hoping his imminent return from exile under an amnesty Bill soon to become law will boost his chances in the vote.
For Mr. Sanchez, seizing back power from the separatists — who have ruled the region for a decade — would be a major victory in his eorts to turn the page on the crisis sparked by the secession bid. It would also allow him to press the restart button on his latest term in oce, which began in November. So far, it has been soured by bitter rightwing Opposition and a corruption probe into his wife, which almost prompted his resignation late last month.
A win by the Catalan Socialist party would allow the region “to turn over a new leaf after 10 lost years” said its leader Salvador Illa, 58, who served as Spain’s Health Minister during the pandemic.
Mr. Puigdemont is for the moment unable to enter Spain, where he is still subject to an arrest warrant. So he has been campaigning for Sunday’s election from a southern French seaside town near the Spanish border, and polls suggest his support has been rising steadily in recent weeks.
For Mr. Puigdemont, Sunday’s vote is also a high-stakes game, not least because he has pledged to retire from politics if he does not win.
Polls suggest the Socialists will win around 40 seats, which would mean it would need allies to reach the 68 required for a governing majority.
Catalonia, of some eight million people, votes on Sunday to elect deputies to its regional Parliament