Separatists in Catalonia have welcomed the decision by the region's leader to stage early elections in September, which they believe will be a major step towards declaring full independence from Spain next year.
On Wednesday, Catalan premier Artur Mas, of the nationalist Convergence and Union (CiU) coalition, said he had brought forward the next election of the region's parliament to September 27th. The announcement followed weeks of tense negotiations with Oriol Junqueras, whose pro-independence Catalan Republican Left (ERC) has been riding high in polls.
The autumn election date is later than Mr Junqueras had wanted. However, he persuaded Mr Mas to abandon the idea of the two parties running on a united electoral ticket. Instead, they will campaign separately and pool their parliamentary seats after the vote in an effort to secure a majority which they believe will give them a mandate to proceed with creating an independent country.
Agreement between the two dominant forces in the Catalan parliament is seen as crucial for the secessionist project – although other, smaller, parties could also join them.
“It’s not possible to complete the process of national transition if there is not a climate of unity of action within the sovereignty movement,” Mr Mas said.
In November, Mr Mas organised an unofficial referendum on independence in the region in which more than two million Catalans turned out to vote, despite warnings from the central government and courts that doing so was illegal. After that vote, the Catalan leader said that he was considering the option of calling early elections and using them as a “definitive referendum” on breaking away from Spain.
More than 80 per cent of people voted in favour of independence in November. However, with most of those opposed to secession staying away because of the referendum's outlaw status, the result was skewed, with polls showing that in fact about half of Catalonia's seven million people want independence. Support for the movement has swelled in recent years, with Catalans complaining that they pay too much in taxes to the Spanish state and that Madrid fails to respect their culture and existing autonomous status.
Mr Junqueras told a radio interview yesterday that the early elections are an opportunity to explain to Catalans “why we want independence: we want a new, clean and just country”. He also identified 2016 as the year in which he expected the region to achieve that goal, an objective previously outlined by Mr Mas.
Outside the Catalan pro-independence sphere, the election announcement was heavily criticised, with Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy describing it as "evidence of the failure of a determined policy which has only generated instability and uncertainty".
