General election in Catalonia 2012
The election for the regional parliament of the Autonomous Community of Catalonia took place on November 25, 2012. It has elected the members of the 10th legislative period since the creation of the Autonomous Community after the end of the Franco dictatorship .
Early end of the previous legislative period
The regional parliament of the IX. The legislative period was elected on November 28, 2010 . The legislative period would have ended normally in autumn 2014. In the IX. In the legislative period, the bourgeois-Catalan Convergència i Unió (CiU) established a minority government (62 of 135 MPs) with Artur Mas as Prime Minister.
The legislative period was marked by the economic crisis and the significant increase in the financial deficit of the budget of the Autonomous Community. Against this background, the Catalan government demanded a special financial status ( pacto fiscal ) from the central government in Madrid , similar to that in the Basque Country and Navarre (cf. financial relations between the state and the autonomous communities ).
On September 11th, 2012, the national holiday of Catalonia , a demonstration of the independence movement took place in Barcelona under the motto “Catalunya nou Estat d'Europa” (Catalonia, a new state of Europe). The influx significantly exceeded expectations. The number of participants (depending on the source) was between 600,000 and 2 million (i.e. between 8 and 25% of the region's total population). The next day, Prime Minister Artur Mas made an official statement that the time had come to provide Catalonia with “state structures”.
In the general debate on his government's policy on September 25, 2012, Mas announced in the regional parliament that new elections would be scheduled for November 25, 2012. He justified this with the extraordinary situation that arose with the mass demonstration of September 11th and the refusal of the Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy ( PP ) to enter into negotiations on the pacto fiscal . In this debate, the regional parliament adopted a resolution with 84 votes (CiU, ICV , EUiA , ERC and two Catalan nationalist groups and a member of the PSC ), 21 against (PP and Ciutadans ) and 25 abstentions (the remaining MPs of the PSC) which says:
"El Parlament de Catalunya constata la necessitat que el poble de Catalunya pugui determinar lliurement i democràticament el seu futur col·lectiu i insta el govern a fer una consulta prioritàriament dins la pròxima legislatura."
"The Parliament of Catalonia states the need for the people of Catalonia to decide freely and democratically about their collective future and calls on the government to hold a referendum on this, preferably in the next legislative period."
Election campaign
According to the prehistory, the election campaign was strongly influenced by the topic of Catalonia's future relationship with Spain : The ERC openly advocated independence from Spain, while the CiU avoided the use of the term “independence” in its election manifesto, but of its “own” State “ spoke within the framework of the European Union . The PSC, on the other hand, advocated remaining with Spain and transforming it into a federal state , while the PP wanted to keep the current autonomy regulations.
Electoral system
The regional parliament of Catalonia has 135 members. These are elected in four constituencies (the provinces): 85 in the Barcelona constituency , 17 in the Girona constituency , 15 in the Lleida constituency and 18 in the Tarragona constituency . The allocation of mandates takes place in the D'Hondt procedure at electoral district level, whereby only parties are considered that have achieved at least three percent of the votes in the respective constituency. 5,413,510 people were entitled to vote, 155,923 of them citizens of Catalonia who live abroad.
Election results
The election had an extraordinarily high turnout of 69.6% (compared to 58.8% in the 2010 election).
Majorities according to municipalities.
Right card :
Relative majorities according to comarca and distribution of seats in each of the 4 provinces.
The CiU was again the strongest force, but fell far short of its own expectations and even recorded the worst result in regional elections since 1984. Another loser was the PSC with its worst election result since 1980.
The ERC (doubling the number of seats compared to 2010) and Ciutadans (tripling the number of seats) emerged as winners. The PP and ICV-EUiA also won votes.
While Solidaritat Catalana per la Independència (SI), which started in 2010 with Joan Laporta as its figurehead, left parliament, the CUP, which was previously only represented at the municipal level and for the first time also competed in regional elections, was able to immediately have three MPs move into parliament.
The number of seats in the Catalan parties (CiU, ERC, SI and CUP) fell by two seats compared to 2010 (from 76 to 74).
Those parties that had approved the resolution to hold a referendum on the future of Catalonia in parliament in September 2012 received 87 seats (CiU, ERC and ICV-EUiA, including the newly elected CUP, which also supports a referendum and supports the independence of Catalonia). The parties that rejected the resolution in September 2012 (PP and Ciutadans) are now represented by 28 MPs.
The proponents of a referendum still have a large majority of the MPs, but were only able to gain one seat compared to 2010 (CiU, ERC, ICV-EUiA and SI). The opponents gained seven seats and the PSC, which had largely abstained in September 2012, lost eight seats.
The official final result in detail:
| Parties | be right | Votes in% (change) 6 |
Seats (change) |
|||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Convergència i Unió (CiU) | 1,116,259 | 30.70% | −7.73% | 50 7 | −12 | |
| Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya (PSC-PSOE) 1 | 524,707 | 14.43% | −3.95% | 20th | −8 | |
| Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya - Catalunya Sí (ERC-CAT SÍ) 3 | 498.124 | 13.70% | + 6.70% | 21st | +11 | |
| Partit Popular (PP) | 471,681 | 12.97% | + 0.60% | 19th | +1 | |
| Iniciativa per Catalunya Verds - Esquerra Unida i Alternativa (ICV-EUiA) 2 | 359.705 | 9.89% | + 2.52% | 13 | +3 | |
| Ciutadans (C's) | 275.007 | 7.56% | + 4.17% | 9 | +6 | |
| Candidatura d'Unitat Popular -Alternativa d'Esquerres (CUP-AE) 5 | 126,435 | 3.47% | + 3.47% | 3 | +3 | |
| Solidarity Catalana per la Independència (SI) 4 | 46,838 | 1.28% | −2.01% | 0 | −4 | |
| Unión Progreso y Democracia (UPyD) | 14,614 | 0.40% | + 0.23% | 0 | = | |
| Other | 148.902 | 4.14% | 0 | = | ||
| Abstentions | 52,898 | 1.46% 6 | ||||
| All in all | 100.0% | 135 | ||||
Individual evidence
- ^ Resolució 742 / IX del Parlament de Catalunya, sobre l'orientació política general del Govern. (PDF; 699 kB) Parliament of Catalonia, October 2, 2012, accessed on November 14, 2012 (Catalan).
- ↑ Arranca la campaña con el debate soberanista como eje central. In: El País. Retrieved November 9, 2012 (Spanish).
- ^ Independence movement in Catalonia: "We are more like Germany than Spain". tagesschau.de, October 31, 2012, archived from the original on November 2, 2012 ; Retrieved November 2, 2012 .
- ↑ Elecciones al Parlamento de Cataluña del 25 de noviembre de 2012. (PDF; 30 kB) Instituto Nacional de Estadística, October 8, 2012, accessed on October 12, 2012 (Spanish).
