December 22, 2017

The results are in from Catalonia's snap parliamentary election, and separatist parties have held onto their majority. They dropped from 72 to 70 total seats held, but this still gives them an absolute majority of the regional parliament's 135 seats.

Junts per Catalunya (JuntsxCat, or Together for Catalonia), the party of ousted president Carles Puigdemont, claimed victory in the regional election in a statement issued after the official results came in on Thursday. JuntsxCat is slated to hold 34 seats, making up almost half of the independence coalition. Two other parties, the left-wing Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (Republican Left of Catalonia) and Candidatura d'Unitat Popular (Popular Unity Candidacy), make up the rest of the independence coalition.

Puigdemont himself, currently living in exile in Belgium, said that the vote was a victory for the "Catalan Republic," the name for the state that he and his fellow secessionists attempted to create earlier this year. He added that "no one can dispute" the secessionists' victory, that the "Spanish state has been defeated," and that the results had dealt Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy a 'slap in the face.'

Read more:

https://sputniknews.com/europe/201712221060221419-catalonia-separatist-parties-hold-parliament/