Crushing defeat for Zapatero party in Catalan poll

Sun, 28 Nov 2010

Barcelona - Embattled Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's Socialist Party suffered a heavy defeat Sunday in elections in the key north-east region of Catalonia.

The Socialist prime minister of the region, Jose Montilla, lost to Artur Mas, leader of the Catalan nationalist party CiU, which had governed Catalonia for 23 years until 2003.

CiU took 62 seats in the 135-seat regional parliament, against 28 seats for the Socialists, when 96 per cent of the vote had been counted. Montilla - Zapatero's former industry minister - announced that he would step down as the Catalan Socialist leader.

Montilla's defeat was perceived as partly reflecting the slumping popularity of Zapatero, who is seen by many has having been erratic in his handling of Spain's deepest economic crisis in decades.

Despite austerity measures and reforms undertaken by the government, concerns persist that Spain might follow Greece and Ireland in needing an international bailout.

The Socialists' defeat in Catalonia could be followed by others in next year's municipal and regional elections, setting the stage for a victory of the opposition conservative People's Party (PP) in the 2012 parliamentary elections, polls indicate.

The Catalan election result left conservative-liberal CiU short of an absolute majority. Mas has not said with whom he might build a coalition government.

Montilla had governed the region of 7.5 million people in a coalition with the Catalan separatist party ERC and the leftist-ecologist ICV.

Mas focused his campaign on promising improvements in areas such as transport and economic management, and on pledges to increase Catalonia's already extensive self-government.

While Montilla sought more autonomy without severing the ties with Spain, CiU has flirted with the idea of independence. Mas has backed the idea of staging a referendum on independence, while saying time is not yet ripe for it.

Catalonia's campaign for more autonomy suffered a setback in June, when Spain's Constitutional Court curtailed new powers that had been granted to the region by the Spanish parliament.

The court said Catalonia could not legally call itself a nation, that the Catalan language could not be regarded as more important than Spanish, and trimmed the region's judicial powers.

Catalonia is now trying to win back the powers the court stripped it of. Spain also faces a separatist movement in the Basque region.

Spain's main economic worries include an 11.1-per-cent budget deficit and 20-per-cent unemployment, the highest in the European Union.

Catalonia is one of the richest of Spain's 17 semi-autonomic regions, but even there, the jobless rate stands at 17.4 per cent.

Source: Earth Times.
Link: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/news/355609,zapatero-party-catalan-poll.html.