Pro-independence parties win, dealing blow to Spanish gov’t
BARCELONA — The three pro-independence parties in Catalonia won a majority of seats in a parliamentary election in the restive region Thursday, setting the stage for another fraught showdown with the central government in Madrid.
With a record-breaking turnout of more than 80 percent, Catalans dealt Spain’s prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, a major setback as the secessionist leaders stood poised to return to power in Barcelona, among them former regional president Carles Puigdemont, now in exile in Brussels.
“Rajoy and his allies have been defeated,” Puigdemont said. “They received a big slap-down.”
Voters packed polling stations to pick a new legislature and to answer an old and bitterly divisive question: Did they back leaders who wanted to remain a part of Spain or seek independence?
With 99 percent of the ballots counted, the three proindependence parties had taken 48 percent of the vote, while the unionist parties and a few smaller parties had garnered 52 percent.
But the pro-independence parties were set to claim 70 seats in the regional parliament with those numbers, giving them a majority in the 135-seat chamber. The unionists and other parties would likely take 65 seats.
The secessionists won that many seats thanks to an electoral-college-style system that gives added weight to votes cast in less populated areas — the traditional strongholds of Catalan nationalist identity. The system is intended to balance out the populated urban areas with rural communities, thus affording parliamentary representation to regional groups even though they might lack a popular majority.
The pro-unity Citizens Party was poised to come in first in terms of votes but is expected to be unable to form a government.
“The law is unfair that gives a majority to the Parliament that they don’t have on the streets,” said Citizens party leader Inés Arrimadas, speaking against the way votes are weighted — rural vs. urban — in Catalonia. Still, she was ebullient, saying that her party’s victory was made possible by more than a million “brave people” who rejected separation from Spain.
“For the first time ever, a constitutionalist party won the election in Catalonia,” Arrimadas said.
The pro-independent bloc’s majority means it will most likely form the new government after negotiations among its members.
Marta Rovira, the leader of the pro-independence Catalan Republican Left, said the secessionist bloc’s showing demonstrated that “the citizens of Catalonia, the majority, voted for the republic.”
She asked the prime minister: “Mr. Mariano Rajoy, are you going to sit at a table as we always asked you and begin to negotiate? Are you going to abolish the 155?”
Article 155 of the 1978 Spanish constitution was the tool Rajoy deployed, for the first time ever, to dissolve the rebellious regional legislature, take over the Catalan government and call snap elections.
Puigdemont warned: “Europe has to take note. Rajoy’s remedies are not working. If he doesn’t change, we are going to change the country faster than even we thought possible.”