(12 May 2024)
RESTRICTION SUMMARY:
ASSOCIATED PRESS
La Roca del Vallès, Spain – 12 May 2024
1. Various of people casting their ballots in Catalonia’s regional elections
2. SOUNDBITE (Catalan) Tomas Velez, voter:
“I feel very happy. Because I think that things are slowing rolling on. I am 80 years old, and I’ve seen a lot of bad times. But right now I think things are slowly getting better.”
3. Cutaway voter
4. SOUNDBITE (Catalan) Dolça Ortega, voter:
“I think people are getting tired, very tired. But I don’t think a change will be possible right now. Because people are too divided. They will have to make coalitions, and they always have the same outcome. It’s a mistake they keep repeating.”
5. Cutaway voter
6. SOUNDBITE (Spanish) Juan Manuel Mena, voter:
“I hope so, I hope so (that there will be a change). Because if it doesn’t happen things will stay bad. But we will see. Time will tell.”
7. Woman and man voting
STORYLINE:
Catalonia is holding a regional election on Sunday whose outcome will reverberate in Spain’s national politics.
The ballot will be a test both for the strength of the separatist movement in the wealthy north-eastern part of Spain and for the policies of Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.
A total of nine parties are running and no single one is expected to come close to winning enough votes to reach the absolute majority of 68 seats in the chamber.
So deal-making will be critical.
More than 5.7 million voters are eligible to choose lawmakers for the regional parliament based in Barcelona.
Separatists have held the regional government for more than a decade.
But polling and a national election in July show that support for secession has shrunk somewhat since former regional president Carles Puigdemont led an illegal – and futile – breakaway bid in 2017.
Puigdemont is a fugitive from Spain’s laws since he fled the country days after his failed secession attempt.
But that isn’t stopping him from running in this election as he campaigns from southern France.
He has said that he will return to Spain when the newly elected lawmakers convene to choose a regional president at some point after the election.
By that time, Puigdemont hopes to be cleared of any legal troubles after Spain’s parliament gives final approval to a contentious amnesty for him and hundreds of other separatists.
The amnesty forms part of Sánchez’s intense push to reduce tensions in Catalonia that also included the pardoning of jailed high-profile separatists.
If voters don’t validate that by coming out in support of his Socialist party, then it would be a blow to the leader who heads a minority coalition in Madrid.
AP video by German Martinez
Production by Herman Munoz
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