Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s socialists won regional elections in Catalonia with the Catalan Socialist Party (PSC), led by former Spanish Health Minister Salvador Illa, while pro-independence parties lost ground. In the election campaign, the issue of Catalonia’s relationship with the rest of Spain was overshadowed by other challenges, such as drought and the region’s housing crisis. Former regional president Carles Puigdemont’s Together for Catalonia (JxCat) party came in second place, regaining its status as the region’s main pro-independence force ahead of the Catalan Republican Left (ERC). Overall, however, nationalist parties have lost support, meaning they no longer control the regional parliament, in a major blow for the independence movement. Despite this, in recent years the pro-independence parties have wrested substantial concessions from the central government and continue to ask for a referendum on independence: we talk about this with Mario Magarò, freelance journalist in Barcelona, expert on Catalonia and environmental crimes in South America. | Lithuania voted on Sunday to choose its President of the Republic. For the moment, no candidate has reached an absolute majority (over 50 percent of the votes) but the outgoing president Gitanas Nauseda, 59 years old, has partially emerged the winner, having collected 44.19 percent of the votes in this first round of elections. preferences. In second place is Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Šimonytė, 49, who obtained 19.78 percent of the votes. In third place is the lawyer Ignas Vegele, supported by 12.5 percent of voters, who however is unable to access the ballot. The ballot will be held on May 26th. Nauseda said he was confident of winning the second round. The main duties of the president in the Lithuanian political system are supervision of foreign and security policy and the role of commander-in-chief of the armed forces. Lithuania, a relatively small state, has strategic importance. Together with the other Baltic states and Poland, it constitutes the eastern flank of NATO. It is no coincidence that the war in Ukraine was at the center of Nauseda’s electoral campaign: we talk about it with Andrea Griffante, researcher at the Lithuanian Institute of History in Vilnius and ANSA correspondent from the Baltic. At the microphones, Laura Silvia Battaglia.
14 May 2024
