Catalan voters split over ties with Spain
BARCELONA: Voters in Catalonia faced a momentous choice in elections yesterday for their regional parliament: Either support political parties that are determined to keep up the pressure to turn their region into Europe’s newest country, or opt for those who want it to stay as part of Spain.
The pivotal election is aimed at breaking the bitter deadlock over the issue of secession. But neither side is likely to win a clear majority in the new regional parliament, setting up the scenario of long and challenging negotiations to form a new Catalan government.
Opinion polls have shown fugitive and jailed separatist candidates neck-and-neck in opinion polls with unionists, who claim to be in the best position to return Catalonia to stability and growth.
But with a record turnout expected, the outcome could hinge on the more than one-fifth who are undecided among Catalonia’s 5.5 million eligible voters.
The nearly 2 700 polling stations were to remain open until 7pm local time, with results expected a few hours later.
Weeks of campaigning involved little debate about regional policy on issues such as public education, health or housing.
At the heart of the battle instead was the sensational independence push that led to Spain’s worst political crisis in decades.
Separatist regional lawmakers made a unilateral declaration of independence on October 27, prompting Spain’s national government to fire the regional government and dissolve the Catalan parliament. Courts later ordered the arrest of the former Catalan leaders.
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy called an 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 said Catalan independence would go against the Spanish constitution and refused to accept the possibility.
The separatists, including a fugitive former leader evading Spanish authorities in Brussels and another campaigning from a jail near Madrid, are equally uncompromising.
In Barcelona yesterday, citizens queued up to cast their votes.
Manuel Abella, a 64 year-old pensioner, said he voted for Ciutadans (Citizens), a pro-business party that wants Spanish unity and has shown strongly in polls. “The problem we have is that now people are divided, you are either with us or against us.
“I have experienced this in my own family. We have arrived at the point that we can’t talk politics.”
Sergi Balateu, a 37-year-old marketing director, voted at Barcelona’s Ramon Llull school, where less than three months ago police in riot gear used force to stop him and others voting in an independence referendum that the Spanish government had said was illegal.
Balateu said he voted for Together For Catalonia, which wants the region to secede. “It is a strange feeling to vote here today,” he said. – AP