More than three years after a failed bid to break away from Spain, Catalonia goes to the polls Sunday for an election that Madrid hopes will unseat the region’s ruling separatists.
Despite anticipation trailing the upcoming polls, Sunday’s vote could see a high level of abstentions as Spain battles a third wave of the pandemic, with regional authorities ramping up restrictions to slow soaring case numbers after the Christmas holidays. As of Wednesday, Catalonia was reporting an accumulated incidence rate of 391 cases per 100,000 inhabitants in the past two weeks, which while below Spain’s current average is still considered dangerous by epidemiologists. More than 9,000 of Spain’s confirmed a total of 63,000 virus deaths were in Catalonia.
In a highly-controversial move, people with the virus, as well as those in quarantine, will have the right to cast their ballots in person in the last hour before voting closes at 7pm in the northeastern region which is home to 7.8 million people.
Uncertainty as a result of the virus has seen nearly 31.000 of the 82,000 people who have been asked to help staff polling stations on the day, asked to be recused, despite pledges they will receive full protective suits.
Interim regional president Pere Aragonès had wanted to postpone the election that he had called before a post-Christmas surge in infections, but a court ruled that it should go forward. Two other Spanish regions postponed elections in the summer until contagion rates dropped. Neighboring Portugal, which is being hammered by the virus, held a national election last month.
“We can guarantee that the polling stations will be safe,” said Bernat Solé, the leading Catalan government official in charge of the vote’s preparations.
Possible Breakaway
Beyond the ongoing health crisis, the vote has been overshadowed by a bitter split between the separatist factions following the failed independence bid of 2017 that sparked Spain’s worst political crisis in decades.
The Catalan government has been dominated by separatists since 2015 and Spain’s Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is hoping that this election, the fifth in a decade, could end their rule. Although he himself came to power in 2018 thanks in part to support from Catalan separatists, Sanchez has not hidden his desire to remove them from power, a difficult goal to achieve.
Even today, his minority government still relies on them to pass legislation.
