The president of Catalonia, Pere Aragonès, announced on Wednesday that he had dissolved the Catalan parliament and called an early election for Sunday 12 May, after his minority government failed to pass a budget for the wealthy northeast region.
‘I have decided to call elections for the Catalan parliament for 12 May,’ he said during a brief press conference, accusing opposition MPs of ‘irresponsibility’.
Aragonès of the more moderate Esquerra Republicana (ERC) pro-independence party, had lost his majority in the Catalan parliament in October 2022 when the rival separatist party Junts per Catalunya (JxCat) withdrew from an alliance, accusing the regional president of not doing enough to secure independence from Madrid.
The move to dissolve the Catalan parliament comes on the eve of a vote in Spain’s national parliament on a controversial amnesty bill that could pardon hundreds of leaders and supporters of the pro-independence movement, including those involved in Catalonia’s unsuccessful bid to declare independence from Spain in 2017. ALSO READ: Thousands protest in central Madrid over government’s Catalan amnesty bill.
Some pro-independence leaders were jailed at the time, and others like former President Carles Puigdemont fled the country.
The amnesty proposal has aroused the ire of millions of Spaniards. Those who oppose the bill believe that the people involved in provoking one of the country’s biggest crises since the transition to democracy after the death of Franco in 1975 shouldn’t get away with charges including sedition and rebellion.
But Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s government in Madrid relies on Catalan pro-independence parties to approve laws in Spain’s parliament. The central government is also trying to win the backing of those parties to pass a national budget.
Sánchez’s PSOE socialist party and his allies are expected to give their initial backing to the amnesty law in a parliamentary vote on Thursday, while the right-wing People’s Party (PP) and far-right Vox party will oppose it.
The call for early Catalan elections is unlikely to have an impact on the vote.
The Catalan election had to be held before the end of the year. Catalonia has been governed by pro-independence parties for more than a decade, but Sánchez’s PSOE (PSC in Catalonia) have polled strongly in the region recently.
🗳️ El #president @perearagones anuncia la convocatòria d’eleccions per al proper 12 de maig
— Govern de Catalunya (@govern) March 13, 2024
💬 "Per no dependre de la irresponsabilitat dels que posen per davant interessos de partit he decidit convocar eleccions per seguir fent avançar el país"https://t.co/tXYRax7EtA
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