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MULTIMEDIA
May 27, 2012
 
 
 
 
 
 

Low turnout in Catalan ‘referendum,’ big majority favor independence

A woman casts her ballot during a referendum of Catalan independence in Vilafranca del Penedes, Spain, on Sunday.
15 December 2009 / REUTERS/AP, MADRID
Turnout in an “informal” referendum on Sunday on whether wealthy Catalonia should secede from Spain fell short of organizers’ hopes, but they said enough voters showed up to energize their separatist campaign.
About 30 percent of 700,000 eligible voters in 170 towns and villages in the region’s Catalan-language-speaking heartland voted on the question of whether Catalonia should become an independent state within the European Union, organizers said.

This was below the 40 percent target initially mentioned by leaders of the campaign, which aims to put pressure on Catalonia’s biggest political parties to call for a real referendum on secession in the future.

Early results showed almost 95 percent of those who voted wanted Catalonia, which has a population of seven million and already enjoys considerable autonomy, to leave Spain.

But, with separatists bound to be more likely to take part in a vote which the Spanish government had dismissed as illegitimate, organizers had been more interested in seeing the level of turnout.

The result of the vote, which was dismissed as futile by the Spanish government, will have no legal impact, but organizers hope to organize another, bigger referendum in the region’s capital, Barcelona, next year.

“This has been a powerful event that is going to push us towards independence,” referendum campaign spokesman Uriel Beltran told Reuters by telephone.

The campaign was organized by a coalition of Catalan nationalists, including left-wing parties and dissident members of Catalonia’s biggest political group, the center-right Convergencia i Unio. Their campaign has been well organized, but backers say they have had to mobilize voters with a fraction of the resources available for official elections.

Catalan regional elections are due by the end of 2010, and any surge in separatist sentiment would be a serious problem for Spain’s Socialist prime minister, Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, just when he needs to focus on dragging Spain from recession without unsettling debt markets.

 
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