Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s conservatives have retained power in his home region of Galicia in regional elections, but separatists made a strong showing in the Basque Country.
Rajoy was spared political humiliation after his Popular Party came out on top in Sunday’s polls in Galicia, official results showed, despite the sting of the recession and his government’s biting austerity measures.
The region is a traditional Popular Party stronghold and defeat would have undermined Rajoy as he tries to convince global markets that he can fix Spain’s finances.
However, a second regional election in the Basque Country added to the Spanish leader’s problems with an exit poll showing a new separatist coalition had finished second behind the Basque Nationalist Party, which seeks greater autonomy for the region.
The two regional votes came at a critical time for Rajoy, who has to decide whether to seek a eurozone sovereign rescue to finance the nation’s runaway public debt — and if yes, when to do so.
Rajoy’s Popular Party captured 41 seats in the 75-seat Galician parliament, up from 38 seats in the outgoing assembly, official results showed with almost all of the votes counted.
The Popular Party had been defending a tight, but absolute majority in Galicia, Rajoy’s home region, which has a population of 2.8 million.
Voters apparently decided to stick with Rajoy’s party despite a jobless rate that has climbed sharply to 21 percent, approaching the national rate of 25 percent.
The economic pain and cuts in education and health are fueling discontent across the 17 powerful regions.
Those sentiments are especially raw in the Basque Country, holding its first regional vote since armed separatist group ETA renounced the use of violence last year.
The Basque Nationalist Party won 27 seats in the 75-seat Basque parliament, followed by the separatist Euskal Herria Bildu coalition with 21 seats, meaning around two-thirds of the assembly will be made up of nationalists.
“It is time to start thinking as a people, as a nation. It is time to stop [taking] the orders from Madrid,” the leader of the Euskal Herria Bildu coalition, novelist Laura Mintegi, told a post-election rally in Bilbao.
The result would lend strength to the campaign to have convicted ETA prisoners transferred to prisons closer to home, she added.
The Bildu alliance appears to have filled the space left by the ETA-linked Batasuna Party, outlawed in 2003, and the big question is whether the Basque Nationalist Party will seek an alliance with Bildu or will turn elsewhere.
Political analysts believe a Basque regional government that includes Bildu will bring questions of Basque independence to the forefront of the political debate.
Basque Nationalist Party leader Inaki Urkullu, gave no clues as to his plans.
“A new era has started,” he told a post-election rally in Bilbao.
ETA is blamed for 829 deaths during its four-decade armed campaign for an independent Basque homeland in parts of southern France and northern Spain.
Far from the violence ravaging Haiti, a market on the border with the Dominican Republic has maintained a welcome degree of normal everyday life. At the Dajabon border gate, a wave of Haitians press forward, eager to shop at the twice-weekly market about 200km from Haiti’s capital, Port-au-Prince. They are drawn by the market’s offerings — food, clothing, toys and even used appliances — items not always readily available in Haiti. However, with gang violence bad and growing ever worse in Haiti, the Dominican government has reinforced the usual military presence at the border and placed soldiers on alert. While the market continues to
An image of a dancer balancing on the words “China Before Communism” looms over Parisian commuters catching the morning metro, signaling the annual return of Shen Yun, a controversial spectacle of traditional Chinese dance mixed with vehement criticism of Beijing and conservative rhetoric. The Shen Yun Performing Arts company has slipped the beliefs of a spiritual movement called Falun Gong in between its technicolored visuals and leaping dancers since 2006, with advertising for the show so ubiquitous that it has become an Internet meme. Founded in 1992, Falun Gong claims nearly 100 million followers and has been subject to “persistent persecution” in
ONLINE VITRIOL: While Mo Yan faces a lawsuit, bottled water company Nongfu Spring and Tsinghua University are being attacked amid a rise in nationalist fervor At first glance, a Nobel prize winning author, a bottle of green tea and Beijing’s Tsinghua University have little in common, but in recent weeks they have been dubbed by China’s nationalist netizens as the “three new evils” in the fight to defend the country’s valor in cyberspace. Last month, a patriotic blogger called Wu Wanzheng filed a lawsuit against China’s only Nobel prize-winning author, Mo Yan (莫言), accusing him of discrediting the Communist army and glorifying Japanese soldiers in his fictional works set during the Japanese invasion of China. Wu, who posts online under the pseudonym “Truth-Telling Mao Xinghuo,” is seeking
‘SURPRISES’: The militants claim to have successfully tested a missile capable of reaching Mach 8 and vowed to strike ships heading toward the Cape of Good Hope Yemen’s Houthi rebels claim to have a new, hypersonic missile in their arsenal, Russia’s state media reported on Thursday, potentially raising the stakes in their attacks on shipping in the Red Sea and surrounding waterways against the backdrop of Israel’s war with Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The report by the state-run RIA Novosti news agency cited an unidentified official, but provided no evidence for the claim. It comes as Moscow maintains an aggressively counter-Western foreign policy amid its grinding war on Ukraine. However, the Houthis have for weeks hinted about “surprises” they plan for the battles at sea to counter the