Local News: Catalonia Elections 2010

What a time to be studying in Barcelona!  Though I missed the midterm elections for the House of Representatives and the Senate back in the United States, I was fortunate enough to experience how elections worked in Spain; more specifically, in Catalonia.  It was very interesting to see all of the advertisements and how certain candidates campaigned for this election.  For instance, Alicia Sanchez-Camacho, representative of the PP (Popular Party), focused her campaign a lot on immigration.  She was clearly against immigration and made that point clear when she came out with a campaign strategy of making a computer game that could be downloaded and played for free on the internet.  This game entailed her face hovering above immigrants coming into Spain and Catalonia, and after clicking on immigrants below her, bombs would be dropped on the immigrants.


Unfortunately, this campaign strategy did not work out for Sanchez-Camacho and the PP party.  Artur Mas, head of the CiU party ended up winning 62 seats, thus winning the 2010 election.  The CiU party gained 14 seats in 2010 after only holding 48 since the 2006 election.  This was a huge win for the CiU; however, it was not a surprising win.  The party that was in control before the election was the Socialist Party (PSC).  This is also the party that has the majority rule in Madrid in the Spanish Parliament.  Due to the current economic status of Spain and Catalonia, the Catalan people are not pleased with the Socialist's policies and therefore were not expected to win this election.  Though it was fairly difficult to know all of the factors voters were voting on this election, it was still exciting to see how another countries elections work.

Artur Mas, leader of the CiU