Catalan Government Spokesman: Majority Favours Right to Decide

Catalan Minister for the Presidency and government spokesman Francesc Homs said on Friday that "the mainstream, the broad majority, favours the right to decide," in response to a poll published by newspaper El Periódico, which puts governing conservative liberals CiU behind pro-independence centre-left ERC were elections to be held today. It also gives the bloc for the “right to decide,” i.e. self-determination, at least four more seats in the Catalan Parliament.

In an interview with Catalan TV channel TV3, Homs also said he was taking a "prudent outlook" on the poll after "the experience of the last election" in which surveys were well awry of the actual results. He also noted that "there are several fronts," in reference to crisis, budget cuts and corruption, and in this sense "CiU is taking a battering."

Francesc Homs also reacted to the survey giving his party between 34 and 35 MPs and pro-independence ERC between 39 and 40 seats, saying that "when the decision has been taken to go ahead with the transition [towards independence], there are consequences, and there is no going back."

If the results predicted by the survey are confirmed, CiU would lose between 14 and 15 MPs, and would for the first time ever be the second-placed Catalan parliamentary group, in terms of seats. Socialist PSC, who favour a federal Spanish state, would also plummet to between 16 and 17 seats, from the 20 they have now. The same would happen to Spanish PM Rajoy's Popular Party, currently at 19 seats, which would get between 13 and 14.

The big winner in the survey is pro-independence ERC, but the results are also positive for left-wing federalists ICV, which could reach 15 or 16 members, now standing at 13, and for Spanish unionist Ciudadanos, who could go from the current 9 to 12 or 13 seats. Left-wing pro-independence CUP would keep the three MPs they won in the last election when they first entered Parliament.

Source: Empordà