Spain Socialists win Catalan election
By Guy Hedgecoe
The Socialists of Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez have won Catalonia’s regional election as pro-independence parties lost ground.
The Catalan Socialist Party (PSC), under former Spanish health minister Salvador Illa, made substantial gains to emerge as the clear winner.
With 99% of votes counted, it has secured 42 seats.
Support for independence has dropped to 42%, from 49% in 2017, says the Catalan government’s statistics institute.
In the campaign ahead of this election, the issue of Catalonia’s relationship with the rest of Spain was pushed into the background by other challenges, such as the region’s drought and housing crisis.
The hardline Together for Catalonia (JxCat) party of the former regional president Carles Puigdemont was second, with 35 seats, recovering its status as the primary pro-independence force in the region ahead of the Catalan Republican Left (ERC).
But overall, nationalist parties lost support, meaning they no longer control the regional parliament, in a blow for the independence movement.
Even so, pro-independence parties have wrung substantial concessions from the central government in recent years and continue to demand a referendum on independence.
