After ten years in power, Carles Puigdemont and other separatists lost their majority in Sunday’s Catalan regional election, which was easily won by the Socialists led by Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.
Six years had passed since Puigdemont spearheaded an abortive 2017 independence bid that precipitated the greatest political crisis to hit Spain in decades.
The Catalan Socialist party, led by Salvador Illa, Spain’s health minister during the epidemic, secured 42 out of the 135 members in the regional parliament, nine more than in the 2021 election.
“A new era in Catalonia” will begin, according to Sanchez, who hailed the outcome as “historic” in a post on X.
“A new era for all Catalans, whatever they think,” said Illa as his supporters cheered his victory.
It was a major victory for Sanchez, who had wanted to show that his policy of defusing tensions triggered by the Catalan crisis had worked, ultimately reducing pro-independence sentiment in this wealthy northeastern region of eight million people.
And it gives him some much-needed breathing space after a difficult start to his latest term in office which began in November and has been soured by right-wing opposition and a graft probe into his wife that almost caused him to resign.
Since becoming premier in 2018 in the months following the failed separatist bid, Sanchez has sought to “heal the wounds” caused by the unprecedented political crisis
In 2021, he pardoned the separatists jailed over the secession bid and is currently advancing an amnesty bill for those still wanted by the justice system in exchange for key separatist backing that let him secure a new term in office.
