According to a survey based on interviews with 3,000 voters, Ciudadanos will be the most voted for party in the Catalan election. However, independence parties jointly will have grabbed a bigger share of today’s vote which Spain's government had hoped would solidify links between Catalonia and Madrid, not confirm the Catalans' desire for independence.
Pro-unity party, Ciudadanos, will have attracted the most votes but will be unable to form a government in Catalonia as the separatists are highly likely to retain their absolute majority in the regional parliament.
If the exit polls and surveys are proved to be correct, the result from an 80%+ turnout will be a severe blow to Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy whose strategy was that this regional election would return a ‘unity' Catalan executive and quell the separatist movement’s tenet that ‘given the vote, the Catalonian electorate would prefer independence from Madrid.’
The last time the people of Catlonia voted, or tried to vote, was at October 1st's illegal referendum when police and Guardia Civil let loose a barrage of violence on voters attending voting stations. Images of blood-stained women and baton-wielding national police went around the world and increased Rajoy's domestic appeal as a 'hard man' but caused international opprobrium.
Independence was declared after the October vote. Rajoy reacted by sacking the entire Catalan cabinet and dissolved the regional parliament, actions which led to today’s election where the provisional result puts the centrist, pro-unity Ciudadanos in first place but unable to form a government.
Ciudadanos and former regional president, the exiled Carles Puigdemont’s ‘Junts per Catalunya’ are level pegging for seats in the regional parliament, not exactly the result Rajoy wanted just before Christmas.
UPDATE Friday 22nd December
“As you can see, we are the comeback kids,” Joan Maria Pique, campaign manager in Brussels for the exiled former president Carles Puigdemont.
The unionist centre-right party Ciudadanos, led in Catalonia by Ines Arrimadas, now is the largest force in the regional parliament. Arrimades claimed the result showed the "majority is in favour of union with Spain," and insisted she would continue to fight against independence.
The pro-independence parties secured an absolute majority of 70 seats out of 135, and 47.49% of the vote. The remain unionist bloc took 57 seats, with 43.48% of the vote.
Xavier Garcia Albiol, the candidate for Mariano Rajoy’s PP, which lost eight seats, said this was a “very bad result” for his party and for “the future of Catalonia."
A record 82% of Catalonia's 5.5 million voters came out in the snap poll which aimed to restore an autonomous government two months after Madrid imposed direct rule under Article 155 in due to the October 1st vote and subsequent unilateral declaration of independence.
Catalonia’s sacked president, Carles Puigdemont, has declared the election result a triumph for the independence movement and a blow for direct rule imposed by Madrid.
“The Spanish state has been defeated, Rajoy and his allies have lost,” said Puigdemont in Brussels who demanded that a legitimate government should be restored and that warrants for the arrest of politicians, including himself, should be torn up and political prisoners arrested and held in jail since October should be released and charged of sedition and rebellion, dropped.
