the separatists lose their majority to the socialists of Pedro Sanchez

The 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.

The independence parties, which have ruled Catalonia for a decade, lost their majority on Sunday May 12 in a regional election won by the socialists of Spanish 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, obtained 59 seats.

The majority is set at 68 seats in a parliament with 135. During the last regional election in February 2021, these three parties obtained 74.

Coalition to come

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, one of the worst crises experienced by contemporary Spain.

But their candidate Salvador Illa, former Minister of Health during the Covid 19 pandemic, will have to find partners to articulate a majority. In 2021, he had already won the regional elections but was unable to be installed as regional president, in a predominantly pro-independence parliament.

The hypothesis most cited by analysts is an alliance with the far left, which governs in Spain with Pedro Sanchez, and with ERC, the most moderate party among the separatists, which lost a lot of ground during this election. Between them, these parties would barely have an absolute majority of 68 seats.

A breath of fresh air for Pedro Sanchez

Pedro Sanchez 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 and led to a reduction in separatist sentiment in this region of eight million inhabitants which is one of the economic and industrial engines of the country.

“Today we are thinking of opening a new stage in Catalonia, to unite and serve the Catalans,” said Salvador Illa, before the polling stations closed.

This socialist victory is also a breath of fresh air for the Prime Minister, whose mandate was weakened by the opening of a judicial investigation against his wife, before whom he considered resigning two weeks ago.

Determined to “heal the wounds” opened by the “political crisis” of 2017, Pedro Sanchez pardoned in 2021 the independence leaders sentenced to prison and agreed last year to pass an amnesty law for all separatists pursued by the courts, in exchange for the support of their parties for his renewal for a new four-year term.

This amnesty must be definitively voted on by deputies in the coming weeks and allow the return to Catalonia of Carles Puigdemont, leader of the secession attempt who fled the region in 2017 to settle in Belgium in order to escape prosecution judicial.

A very controversial measure, it brought the right-wing and far-right opposition into the streets who accuse the Prime Minister, supported in the Spanish Parliament by Junts and ERC, of ​​having become their “hostage” with the simple aim of remaining in power.

What future for Carlos Puigdemont?

Still under arrest warrant in Spain, Carles Puigdemont campaigned from the south of France and was playing big in this election. He assured that he would withdraw from local politics if he failed to regain the seat of regional president that he occupied in 2017.

These elections were also marked by the emergence of a new far-right separatist formation, Catalan Alliance, which won two seats but with which the other separatist formations assured that they did not want to ally.

The conservative People’s Party made a breakthrough in the region by obtaining 15 seats compared to 3 in 2021 while the far-right Vox party held on with 11 seats.