Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez’s Socialist Party hopes to show today that Catalonia has turned its back on its separatist past as it seeks to win local elections against Carles Puigdemont, leader of the region’s independence movement in 2017.

With 8 million inhabitants, this wealthy region in northeastern Spain, one of the country’s economic and industrial powerhouses, votes today to elect its 135 members of parliament.

Polling stations close at 20:00 (local time, 21:00 Greek time) and the results will be known later in the evening.

Wrapping up his election campaign on Friday night in Barcelona, ​​Sanchez called on Catalans to vote for the social “progress, for coexistence and stability” embodied by the Socialist Party, after years of “instability” in the region.

Sanchez, who has the support of pro-independence parties in the Spanish parliament, hopes to wrest the region, which they have ruled for a decade, from them. His goal is to prove that the appeasement policy he has followed since 2018, when he came to power, has borne fruit and curbed separatist tendencies.

A clear victory for the Socialists will also give new impetus to the government, which has been hit by the start of a judicial investigation against Sanchez’s wife, which caused him to consider resigning as prime minister two weeks ago.

Grace and amnesty

Determined to “heal the wounds” left by the 2017 political crisis over Catalonia’s attempted independence, Sanchez in 2021 pardoned jailed separatist leaders and last year proposed legislation granting amnesty to those prosecuted in exchange their support for his government.

In the coming weeks, lawmakers are expected to formally vote on the amnesty bill, which would allow Puigdemont to return to Catalonia, where he fled in 2017 to settle in Belgium to avoid prosecution.

In the polls, the candidate of the Socialists Salvador Iya he appears ahead of Puigdemont, who was president of Catalonia in 2017, but the latter still hopes to win. In the event of defeat, Puigdemont, head of the Junts per Catalunya (Together for Catalonia) party, has said he will withdraw from regional politics.

Divided separatist movement

Due to the disagreements, the separatist movement is not certain that it will manage to maintain the majority.

The moderate ERC under Get Aragones – the current president of Catalonia – is accused of “treason” by the Junts and lost a lot of ground in July’s parliamentary elections, in which the Socialists made a big surge.

The alliance game has become even more difficult for Catalan independence supporters after the emergence of a new far-right party, the Catalan Union, with which the other separatist parties have said they do not wish to ally.

In the event of victory, the Socialists, who appear to be gathering around 40 seats when 68 are needed for an absolute majority, will also have to find allies to govern.

One scenario is an alliance with the extreme left, which also participates in the government of Spain, but also with the ERC which will thus abandon the idea of ​​uniting the separatist movement.