Catalonia: the separatists lose their majority to the socialists of Pedro Sanchez
The independence parties, which have ruled Catalonia for a decade, lost their majority on Sunday May 12 during a regional election won by the socialists of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez. After the counting of more than 98% of the ballots, the three separatist groups including Junts per Catalunya (Together for Catalonia) of Carles Puigdemont and ERC (Republican Left of Catalonia) of the current regional president Pere Aragonès, only obtained 59 seats out of the 135 to be filled. In February 2021, these three parties obtained 74.
Pedro Sanchez’s Socialists won 42 seats, nine more than in 2021, proof that separatist sentiment has stalled in Catalonia, more than six years after the secession attempt of October 2017. But their candidate Salvador Illa, former Minister of Health during the Covid-19 pandemic, will have to find allies to articulate a majority. In 2021, he had already won the regional elections but could not be invested in a predominantly pro-independence Parliament.
The socialist Prime Minister had made this election a central issue of his mandate in order to prove that the policy of détente he has pursued in Catalonia since coming to power in 2018 has borne fruit in this region of 8 million inhabitants. which is one of the economic and industrial engines of the country. This victory is also a breath of fresh air for the elected socialist, whose mandate was weakened by the opening of a legal investigation against his wife, before whom he considered resigning two weeks ago.
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