Separatists in Catalonia won control of their regional parliament Sunday in an election that they vowed would set them on the road to independence from Spain.
The region’s nationalist president Artur Mas declared victory to a cheering crowd of flag-waving supporters after an emotional election that has heightened tensions with Madrid.
“We have won,” he bellowed, after results published by the regional government showed that his separatist alliance and another pro-independence group won an absolute majority of seats between them.
“We have a democratic mandate… This gives us enormous legitimacy to go ahead with our plan” for independence, Mas told the open-air rally in Barcelona.
Spain’s ruling conservative Popular Party dismissed the result and said it would keep fighting against the independence drive.
“The government will continue to guarantee the unity of Spain,” its spokesman Pablo Casado told reporters in Madrid.
Official results with nearly 98 percent of the votes counted showed Mas’s pro-independence alliance will hold an absolute majority in parliament if it teams up with the radical left-wing separatist group CUP.
Mas’s Together For Yes alliance secured 62 seats in the regional assembly and the CUP won 10, according to figures published by the regional government.
That gave them a joint total of 72 seats, above the 68 needed for an absolute majority in the 135-seat regional parliament.
Turnout was high at more than 77 per cent after weeks of tense and emotional campaigning in which Spain’s leaders warned Catalonia’s place in the European Union was at stake.
