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Six years after plunging Spain into its worst political crisis in decades, Catalonia's separatist parties are in danger of losing their hold on power in the north-eastern region after the pro-union Socialist Party scored a historic result in Sunday's election.
The four pro-independence parties, led by the Together party of former regional president Carles Puigdemont, were set to get a total of 61 seats, according to a near-complete count of the ballots. That is short of the key figure of 68 seats needed for a majority in the chamber.
The Socialists' Party of Catalonia (PSC), led by former health minister Salvador Illa, savoured their best result in a Catalan election, claiming 42 seats, up from 33 in 2021, when they also barely won the most votes but were unable to form a government. This was the first time the centre-left party led a Catalan election in both votes and seats won.
Socialist candidate Salvador Illa makes a toast with members of his team and party colleagues after the announcement of the results of elections to the Catalan parliament Emilio Morenatti/AP
“Catalonia has decided to open a new era,” Illa told his thrilled supporters at his party headquarters. “Catalan voters have decided that the Socialist Party will lead this new era, and it is my intention to become Catalonia's next president.”
Illa led Spain’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic before Sánchez sent him back to Barcelona to lead his party. The 58-year-old Illa’s calm tone and focus on social issues convinced many voters that it was time to change after years of separatists pressing for severing century-old ties with the rest of Spain.
Sánchez congratulated Illa on the X platform for the “historic result.”
The socialists will need to earn the backing of other parties to put Illa in charge. Deal-making in the coming days, maybe weeks, will be key to forming a government. Neither a hung parliament nor a new election is out of the question.
But there is a path for Illa to reach the goal of 68 seats. The PSC are already in a coalition government in Madrid with the Sumar party, which now has six seats in the Catalan parliament. But the hard part will be wooing over a leftist party from the separatist camp.
Regardless of those negotiations, Illa’s surge should bode well for Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and the Socialists before the European elections next month.
Far-right gains ground as well
Separatists have held the regional government in Barcelona since 2012 and had won majorities in four consecutive regional elections. However, polling and a national election in July showed that support for secession has shrunk since Puigdemont led an illegal — and futile — breakaway bid in 2017 that led to hundreds of businesses and Catalonia's major banks leaving the region.
The Republican Left of Catalonia of sitting regional president Pere Aragonès plummeted to 20 seats from 33. But the leftist separatist party, which has governed in the minority during a record drought, could be key to Illa’s hopes, although that would require it to break with the pro-secession bloc.
The Popular Party, which is the largest party in Spain's national parliament, where it leads the opposition, surged to 15 seats from three.
The far-right, Spanish ultra-nationalist party Vox held its 11 seats, while on the other end of the spectrum, the far-left, pro-secession Cup took four, down from nine.
An upstart pro-secession, far-right party called Catalan Alliance, which rails against unauthorised immigration as well as the Spanish state, will enter the chamber for the first time with two seats.
“We have seen that Catalonia is not immune to the reactionary, far-right wave sweeping Europe,” Aragonés, the outgoing regional president, said.
The crippling drought, not independence, is currently the leading concern of Catalans, according to the most recent survey by Catalonia’s public opinion office.
The opinion office said that 50% of Catalans are against independence while 42% are for it, meaning support for it has dipped to 2012 levels. When Puigdemont left in 2017, 49% favoured independence and 43% were against.
More than 3.1 million people voted, with participation at 57%. Potentially thousands of voters had trouble reaching their polling stations when Catalonia’s commuter rail service had to shut down several train lines after what officials said was the robbery of copper cables from a train installation near Barcelona.
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Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree appointing Sergei Shoigu as secretary of Russia’s national security council, replacing Nikolai Patrushev.
The appointment comes after Putin proposed to appoint Andrei Belousov as the country’s defence minister instead of Shoigu, who has served in the post for years. The reshuffle comes as Putin starts his fifth presidential term and as the war in Ukraine drags on for the third year.
The change comes weeks after Timur Ivanov, a Russian deputy defence minister in charge of military construction projects, was jailed pending an investigation and trial on charges of bribery.
In line with Russian law, the entire Russian Cabinet resigned on Tuesday when Putin began his fifth presidential term at a glittering Kremlin inauguration.
68-year-old Shoigu has served as defence minister since 2012, and is widely seen as a key figure in Putin's decision to send Russian troops into Ukraine. Shoigu himself will take over from Nikolai Patrushev on the country's security council with Patrushev's role remaining unclear.
Russian forces push towards Kharkiv
The announcement came as thousands more civilians have fled Russia's renewed ground offensive in Ukraine’s northeast that has targeted towns and villages with a barrage of artillery and mortar shelling.
The intense battles have forced at least one Ukrainian unit to withdraw in the Kharkiv region, capitulating more land to Russian forces across less defended settlements in the so-called contested grey zone along the Russian border.
By Sunday afternoon, the town of Vovchansk, among the largest in the northeast with a pre-war population of 17,000, emerged as a focal point in the battle.
Volodymyr Tymoshko, the head of the Kharkiv regional police, said that Russian forces were on the outskirts of the town and approaching from three directions.
“Infantry fighting is already taking place,” he said.
A Russian tank was spotted along a major road leading to the town, Tymoshko said, illustrating Moscow's confidence to deploy heavy weaponry.
Analysts say the Russian push is designed to exploit ammunition shortages before promised Western supplies can reach the front line.
Ukrainian soldiers said that the Kremlin is using the usual Russian tactic of launching a disproportionate amount of fire and infantry assaults to exhaust their troops and firepower. By intensifying battles in what was previously a static patch of the front line, Russian forces threaten to pin down Ukrainian forces in the northeast, while carrying out intense battles farther south where Moscow is also gaining ground.
Russian emergency service employees work at the scene of a partially collapsed block of flats after a missile attack by the Ukrainian Armed Forces in BelgorodAP/Belgorod region governor Vyacheslav Gladkov telegram channel
Moscow accuses Kyiv of missile strike on residential building
Meanwhile, a 10-story apartment building partially collapsed in the Russian city of Belgorod, near the border, killing at least eight people and injuring 20 others. Russian authorities said that the building collapsed following Ukrainian shelling. Ukraine hasn't commented on the incident.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that halting Russia’s offensive in the northeast was a priority, and that Kyiv’s troops were continuing counteroffensive operations in seven villages around the Kharkiv region.
“Disrupting the Russian offensive intentions is our number one task now. Whether we succeed in that task depends on every soldier, every sergeant, every officer,” Zelenskyy said.
The Russian Defence Ministry said Sunday that its forces had captured four villages on the border along Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, in addition to five villages reported to have been seized on Saturday. These areas were likely poorly fortified because of the dynamic fighting and constant heavy shelling, easing a Russian advance.
Russia bombards border city as major assault on Ukraine continues Ukrainians flee Russian advance as footage shows decimated village
Ukraine’s leadership hasn't confirmed Moscow’s gains. But Tymoshko said that Strilecha, Pylna and Borsivika were under Russian occupation, and it was from their direction they were bringing in infantry to stage attacks in other embattled villages of Hlyboke and Lukiantsi.
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Russian tactics in Vovchansk mirror those used in the battles for Bakhmut and Avdiivka in the Donetsk region, he said, in which heavy aerial attacks were accompanied by droves of infantry assaults.
“Now the Russians are simply wiping it (Vovchansk) off the face of the earth and advancing with the scorched earth method. That is, they first scorch a specific area and then the infantry comes in, and they always advance in this way,” he said.
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Ahead of the EU elections, the current centre-right government in Greece maintains its popularity one year after the national elections.
However, Prime Minister Kiriakos Mitsotakis' Nea Demokratia, the European People Party's political affiliate in Greece, leads the polls among Greek citizens, according to the Euronews superpoll. It comes ahead of the EU elections in June, predicting that the current centre-right government will maintain its position
It is an exception in European politics as almost all ruling political parties are set to see losses, the opinion polls report.
The moderate conservatives are far ahead of their leftist and centre-left opponents, from Syriza and the PASOK, respectively, positioned at the second and third places by the Superpoll.
The distance between the centre-right and Syriza candidate Stefanos Kasselakis is more than 20%. The two moderate leftist forces, Syriza and PASOK, struggle in a fratricidal electoral competition.
The early May Superpoll shows that PASOK has lost the second position compared to 1 March, yet the struggle with its leftist rivals is not over. The two political forces are still running a nip-and-tuck political race.
The communists of the old Greek Communist Party, the KKE, are also taking part in the left's internecine battle as a minority dark horse.
The Greek conventional left spectrum (from the more centrist forces to the radical ones) is fragmented at EU parliament-level representation, too. Syriza is a member of the European Left group, PASOK is affiliated with the Socialists and Democrats group, whereas the KKE (the historical Marxist-Leninist Hellenic Communist Party) is a component of the Non-Attached group.
In Strasbourg, the Kyriakos Mitsotakis' party is to provide the EPP with one more seat. Siryza and the Greek communists could confirm their four seats in the European Left benches, and PASOK is to provide three MEPs to the Social and Democrats group after the forced departure of the former vice-president of the EU Parliament, Eva Kaili, involved in the scandal of the Qatar-friendly lobbying.
Eva Kaili in Strasbourg, September 2023 Jean-Francois Badias/Copyright 2023 The AP. All rights reserved.
The Greek Solution party is supposed to grow even further and contribute to the European Conservatives and Reformers Group with two MEPs, one more than the outgoing legislature. This fast-growing right-wing Greek traditional conservative political bloc has surpassed, according to the polls, the KKE.
As for the far-right, the Spartans movement, who have been endorsed by a leading jailed member of the legally banned neo-Nazi Golden Dawn party, have recently been excluded from the ballot for June’s EU election by Greece’s high court.
The votes of the judicially disbanded Nazism apologist political forces could fractionally (by default) beef up the Greek Solution (ECR) and the moderate conservative Mitsotakis` party.
Better than expected for EPP's Nea Demokratia?
Some observers expected the ruling party to suffer political damage due to the alleged involvement of some of its members in the mismanagement that contributed to the train crash in Tempi valley.
Tempe Valley train crash Giannis Papanikos/Copyright 2023 The AP. All rights reserved
A peculiarity of the Greek part of the European elections is that the ruling party's success could be boosted by the candidacy of Fredi Beleri, an ethnic-Greek Albanian mayor detained for corruption in the neighbouring country.
greece superpoll AP Photo
If Beleri gets enough votes, he will have parliamentary immunity. His case has become a popular patriotic cause that could result in a contentious tug-of-war between Greece and Albania.