Spain's Political Storm Stirs Separatist Movements
Election campaign puts independence sentiment back on the agenda.
An anti-separatist rally in Barcelona in January 2023.
Photographer: Europa Press News/Europa PressNational elections in Spain this month won’t heal the political, legal and social fissures unresolved since the end of Spain’s Fascist era in the 1970s. In fact, the July 23 ballot looks set to reignite separatist tensions that have bubbled beneath the surface in recent years.
Both the conservative Popular Party, which is leading in polls, and hard right Vox, which may well end up PP’s governing partners, are campaigning to suppress independence sentiment both in Catalonia and the far north Basque country. The Socialist-led coalition is still trying to prosecute Carles Puigdemont, who fled in 2017 after a fruitless independence referendum in Catalonia.