Opinion – Normalitas: Up to 31,000 Brazilians are expected in the second round in Spain

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Barcelona, ​​the morning of the first round of elections in early October, and a peaceful line wound around the block, snaking along wide sidewalks, around bus stops.

the region of Plaza d’Espanyathe city’s postcard, was taken by red dots interspersed with Brazilian flags and national team t-shirts.

In the queue, high sun in early autumn, a thousand different conversations in our musical language.

The reviewers:

— Wow, someone is missing selling water or a coxinha, right! (in Madrid, according to sources, it had)

The stereotypes:

— Brazilians love a queue!

The agonized, rightly:

— Fake news, fake news, bulls (which is like the españoles they call the feiki níus)..!

I, who have lived in the city for a few years, was surprised by the profusion of voters in this 2022 election compared to 2018. Other friends also had the same impression.

Even so, the fact is that only half of the 11,000 citizens eligible to vote in the Catalan capital attended this first round.

The second round is expected to be more competitive.

As the lawyer of the Brazilian Citizenship Council Ivonete Faust commented to the EFE agency, many of those who did not come on the 2nd were possibly “organizing themselves to vote on Sunday (30th), because it is an important dispute and people want to participate”.

Barcelona is one of the two Spanish cities in which Brazilians living in the country can vote in this 2022 election. The other is the capital Madrid, with 20,000 voters.

The Brazilian population registered in Spain is currently 90,535 people. It is the fifth country in the world with more Brazilians. Of this total, 31,000 citizens are eligible to vote.

Unlike 2018, when Bolsonaro won with 60% of the votes in Madrid, in this first round of 2022 Lula was leader. The current president, who lost in Barcelona in the previous elections, with 46%, again loses the dispute in the city to the PT candidate. Lula led the first round abroad, with just over 47% of the total votes.

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The number of Brazilian citizens eligible to vote abroad has increased by almost 40% since the last elections of 2018. This Sunday 30, up to 697,078 voters will be able to go to the polls worldwide.

It seems insignificant — 0.45% of the total electorate — but there are many of us. And, perhaps even more so because we are far from home, many want to participate, whatever the cost.

Like Amanda, a capixaba I met in that first shift queue. The two of them scorching in the sun for more than half an hour. She, worried, couldn’t take her eyes off the clock.

“My family,” he said. “We came on a nearly two-hour road trip with my little one and baby just so I could vote. Tough, but as things stand, I had to come. And here we are. Look at them around the corner!”

She waves, and her Valencian husband waves back, with the Hispano-Brazilian baby on his lap, smiling, waving goodbye with his chubby hand under the Barcelona sun. The new generation.

Good vote to all <3.

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