Tue, Feb 16, 2021 page4

• Catalan separatists boost majority in regional poll

  ECONOMIC POWERHOUSE: Three separatist parties increased their total seat count by four, and the moderate ERC’s main candidate was likely to become the region’s leader

  • AFP, BARCELONA, Spain
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  Catalan separatist parties on Sunday boosted their parliamentary majority in a regional election that was overshadowed by the COVID-19 pandemic and marked by low turnout, more than three years after a failed bid to break away from Spain.

  With Spain still grappling with a third wave of coronavirus infections, the vote in the wealthy northeastern region was held under tight restrictions to reduce the risk of contagion.

  With 99 percent of the votes counted, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s Socialists won the most votes, but the three separatist parties together were set to get 74 seats in the 135-seat assembly.

  

  Electoral workers wearing protective suits against COVID-19 infection wait at a polling station in Barcelona University in Barcelona, Spain, on Sunday.

  Photo: AP

  That is up from 70 seats won in the previous election in December 2017, just months after Catalonia’s failed secession bid, which led to the jailing of several separatist leaders.

  To reduce the risk of virus transmission in the region, polling stations were set up in spacious venues like food markets, the area around FC Barcelona’s soccer stadium and the bullring in Tarragona.

  Voters had to wear masks, use disinfectant gel provided at polling stations and stand apart while lining up in rainy weather to cast their ballots.

  During the last hour of voting, which was reserved for people infected with COVID-19, polling station workers wore gloves, facial screens and white protective gowns.

  The Socialists had 33 seats, up from 17 in the previous vote when they finished fourth.

  Sanchez had hoped the election — Catalonia’s fifth in a decade — would end separatist rule in the region, which accounts for one-fifth of Spain’s economy.

  He fielded the Spanish Minister of Health Salvador Illa as his candidate in the hope that his high profile in the fight against the pandemic would help win votes.

  While separatist parties have been deeply divided over strategy since the failed secession bid, they were not punished by voters and for the first time won more than 50 percent of the vote, against 47.5 percent four years ago.

  The more moderate ERC got 33 seats, the hardline JxC got 32 and the radical CUP nine seats.

  The result leaves the ERC’s main candidate, 38-year-old jurist Pere Aragones, best placed to become Catalonia’s next leader.

  “We have stopped an operation by the [Spanish] state to expel separatists from institutions,” he said after the results were announced.

  Illa had said it was “time to turn the page” after more than a decade of Catalan nationalist governments focusing on separatism, but Aragones dismissed his approach during the campaign as “amnesia.”

  He has said his party would not turn the page while independence leaders remained in jail over the failed secession bid.

  Catalonia is governed by a coalition led by JxC, which is prone to confrontation with Madrid, and the ERC, which is open to dialogue and has helped Sanchez’s minority government pass laws at the national level.

  The anti-coronavirus measures appeared to discourage people from voting.

  While about 5.5 million people were eligible to vote, turnout was a record low at 54.4 percent, down from almost 80 percent in the previous election.

  “I hesitated until the last minute whether to come vote or not,” Cristina Caballero, a 34-year-old child educator, told reporters at a Barcelona polling station. “I think these elections should have been postponed.”

  Some people picked for polling station duty also expressed concern.

  “Of course we are afraid, I just had cancer and am still on sick leave, but I was called up,” Eva Vizcaino, a 54-year-old office worker, told reporters at a Barcelona polling station.
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