Socialists win elections in Catalonia and put an end to the independence majority | Catalonia

The Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSC) won the Catalan elections yesterday, on an election night full of twists and turns. With a majority for the independence bloc removed relatively early on election night, the question in the final stretch of the count was whether a left-wing bloc would obtain an absolute majority to govern, a hypothesis that was put forward, ruled out, and which was once again on the table, when , with more than 97% of the votes counted, socialists, ERC and Sumar would have 68 seats in Parliament, the minimum threshold for a majority. But the hypothesis ended up taking a back seat when the still president of the Generalitat and ERC candidate, Pere Aragonès, came out to say that it would be up to the two most voted candidates to “choose a path”, announcing that his party would remain “in opposition”.

Shortly afterwards, the leader of Junts, Carles Puigdemont, said that despite his second place he did not rule out leading a government and challenged the ERC, although it was not clear who else could form a majority government with the two forces: “The The distance between the PSC and us is no different to that between the PP and the PSOE in the Spanish Parliament. If ERC is willing to build bridges, we are too.”

The PSC leader celebrated the clear victory: “After 45 years of history, for the first time the PSC won the elections for the Catalan Parliament in both votes and seats”, declared Salvador Illa. “The pro-independence parties, which we respect, have 61 seats. Catalonia is entering a new phase. The Catalans decided to open a new stage,” he said. “Many factors influenced this decision. Certainly one of these factors was the policy carried out by the Spanish Government, by its president, Pedro Sánchez”, defended Illa.

On the social network X (formerly Twitter), the newspaper’s deputy director El País Claudi Pérez summed up the election like this: “Illa has just buried the process. The left does the math. Neither the amnesty nor Sánchez’s 5 days of April punished the PSC. Junts rises and eats the ERC, the big loser, but the pro-sovereignty bloc gives up the majority. The right is on the rise, with the radical and extreme right very strong.”

The diary El Country comments that the consequences of Sánchez’s amnesty for the Catalan independentists was one of the big questions that the elections should answer. “And the result, despite the governance difficulties it leaves behind, was very clear: Pedro’s policy Sanchez […] led to the moment of greatest weakness of the independence forces since 1980. They had never had so few places together”.

With more than 99% of the votes counted, Salvador Illa’s PSC obtained 42 seats, an increase compared to 2021, when it elected 33 deputies, followed, in second place, by Junts (of former president Carles Puigdemont), with 35 places. The ERC (Republican Left of Catalonia), owned by the current president, Pere Aragonès, obtained 20, a lower result than in 2021, when it elected 33 deputies.

Exit polls showed that fourth place would be contested between the conservative Popular Party (PP) and the radical right party Vox, but as the night progressed, the PP was clearly ahead with 15 places and Vox with 11. These results mean a large increase in support for the PP, which obtained only 3 seats in the last elections, which had been the worst result in its history.

Then, at a great distance, the left-wing platform Sumar appears, with 6 seats, and the CUP (left-independentist), with 4. Cidadãos was left out (for the first time since 2006, when it participated in the Catalan elections for the first time) and the Catalan Alliance, a new radical right-wing and pro-independence party, entered Parliament, obtaining 2 seats.