After almost five months without a government, Catalonia finally has a new leader. Quim Torra won a second-round investiture vote this week to take the helm of the region’s separatist government. Unfortunately for Spanish prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, Torra’s pledge is the same as his exiled predecessor’s: to pursue an independent Catalonia. The Catalan secessionists
Remember the Catalonia issue? Up until a couple of days ago, you would have been forgiven for supposing it had all just magically been cleared up. But on Sunday, former pro-independence Catalan president Carles Puigdemont was detained by German police while on his way back from Finland to Belgium, where he has been in voluntary
Spaniards want a new prime minister. That’s the conclusion to be drawn from the latest opinion poll carried out by Metroscopia for the Spanish daily El Pais, which revealed that 85 per cent of the electorate think someone else should have a go at leading the conservative Popular Party. Long-time supporters of the PP are
It’ll be a tense Christmas in the Spanish’s PM’s household this year. Yesterday, in an election called by Mariano Rajoy last month, Catalan pro-independence parties gained a slim majority in the region’s parliament: Together for Catalonia, the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) and the Popular Unity Party (CUP) look set to have jointly won 70
It should come as no surprise that the Spanish government has so swiftly rejected Nicola Sturgeon’s proposal of a bespoke Brexit deal for Scotland. Although Spain might have finally ended its ten month political freeze a couple of months ago, the febrile issue of Catalonian independence remains unresolved. Far from quietening down or going away, the secessionist
Two months on, the outcome of the messy sequence of events triggered by Catalonia’s independence referendum remains unclear: neither side has secured its desired result and, in their own ways, both have behaved badly. How did Spain arrive at this bitter impasse, and what will happen next in the Catalonia saga? If the optimism of Mariano Rajoy,
The violence which marred Catalonia’s independence referendum has dominated the coverage, but the region’s president is confident about what the result means: Catalonia has won the ‘right to an independent state in the form of a Republic,’ he said last night. The outcome of the vote certainly seems convincing at first glance: 90 per cent of Catalans
As the Catalonian independence battle continues to escalate ahead of the proposed October 1st referendum, Mariano Rajoy’s government is going all-out to thwart the secessionist efforts of Catalan president Carles Puigdemont. As he does so, it is becoming harder to see when or how this increasingly unpleasant conflict will be resolved. Following the orders of
As if the issue of Catalonian secession wasn’t fraught enough, some of its most committed advocates are now arguing that the terrorist attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils last week demonstrate the region’s readiness for independence. Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy, for his part, has suggested that the vehicle attacks that left 15 dead require regional differences to
In the early hours of this morning, as police in Barcelona continued to piece together the terrible events on Las Ramblas yesterday afternoon, another vehicle attack occurred in the seaside town of Cambrils, a popular tourist destination about 75 miles south of the Catalonian capital. Five men, some wearing fake explosive belts, drove into crowds and injured
In Spain, the fight over Catalonian independence has just taken a surreal new turn. Catalonian president Carles Puigdemont – a passionate secessionist who has said he is prepared to go to prison for his cause – recently announced that there will be an independence referendum in his region on October 1st. His pledge prompted the
Spain’s recent economic expansion means little to young Spaniards. Many are angry with the country’s tirelessly corrupt politicians, and are unable to pursue rewarding careers in their own country. Despite three-and-a-half years of GDP growth at one of the fastest rates in the eurozone, Spain still has the second highest unemployment rate in the EU,
As the events of the last few days show, the increasingly toxic issue of Gibraltar means the UK’s Article 50 talks with Spain might become more fraught than either party would like. It’s not just that Spain wants to share sovereignty of the Rock with Britain; more dangerous is the fact that Brussels can exploit this dispute to punish the UK for Brexit.
The increasingly radical Catalonian independence project has been dealt its latest blow this week: on Tuesday, Spain’s constitutional court ruled that a projected September referendum on secession would be illegal. This means any plebiscite is effectively banned. But whether Catalonia’s pro-independence president Carles Puigdemont goes ahead anyway remains to be seen. A similarly defiant course of action was
It’s been exactly a year ago since Spain held what would turn out to be the first of two general elections in ten months. The first vote unleashed chaos: new parties Podemos (‘We Can’, on the radical left) and Ciudadanos (‘Citizens’, on the centre-right) split 35 per cent of the vote between them. This ended the joint
After nearly a year of bickering and stalling, Spanish politicians have finally formed their country’s new government. Mariano Rajoy, leader of the conservative Popular Party (PP), returns for a second term as prime minister. This time, Rajoy heads up a coalition made up of the PP, centrist newcomer Ciudadanos (‘Citizens’) and the centre-right Canary Islands Coalition.
There aren’t many certainties in the maelstrom of Spanish politics at the moment, but there is one: that the left, for now at least, is a defeated force. A civil war within the PSOE, the traditional Socialist party, resulted in the resignation of its leader Pedro Sanchez a couple of weeks ago. Meanwhile, radical hard-left
The circus of Spanish politics shows no signs of stopping. For now, the country is managing to weather this eight month-long deadlock surprisingly well: Spain’s GDP growth has continued at one of the fastest rates in the eurozone. But this is in spite, rather than because, of Spain’s zombie government. A record-breaking tourist season has helped, as has
The only surprise result in Spain’s repeat general election on Sunday – rendered necessary by the impasse produced by December’s – was the failure of the new Spanish left to nudge the Socialists out of second place. The radical-left coalition Unidos Podemos (‘United We can’), a combination of Podemos (We Can) and Izquierda Unida (United Left), was
More than four months on from Spain’s December general election, optimism has given way to fatigue and cynicism among the electorate. Coalition negotiations between leading parties have failed, and a repeat election will now be held in Spain on 26 June, a few days after Britain’s EU referendum. But there is little enthusiasm for this second-take. Many Spaniards
