Modest turnout in Barcelona referendum on Catalan independence

Apr 10, 2011, 22:19 GMT

Barcelona - Residents of Spain's second-largest city Barcelona voted Sunday in a non-binding referendum on whether the north-eastern region of Catalonia should become independent from Spain.

Organizers put voter turnout at 21 per cent after polling stations closed. Results of the referendum were not immediately available.

The vote capped a string of similar referenda in more than 530 Catalan municipalities since September 2009.

The overwhelming majority of voters have backed the independence of Catalonia, Spain's wealthiest region, which has 7 million residents. However, the referenda only attracted an average turnout of 18 per cent.

Since the Spanish government does not authorize official referendums on independence, the votes were organized privately by volunteers.

About 1.4 million people - including foreign residents and people as young as 16 year old - were eligible to vote in Barcelona, the Catalan capital.

The referendum, which was organized by a local pro-independence platform, was not legally binding.

However, several members of the Catalan regional government voted, including regional Prime Minister Artur Mas, who said he was voting as a private person.

Mas' Catalan nationalist party CiU was expected to abstain when the regional parliament debates a proposal for a declaration of independence presented by a small separatist party on Wednesday. The proposal was not believed to have a chance of being approved by the Catalan parliament.

Catalonia's culture was repressed during the 1939-75 dictatorship of General Francisco Franco. But Catalonia now has one of the widest measures of self-government among Spain's 17 regions, with its own police force and an energetic policy to promote its language alongside Spanish.

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero's government already faces a separatist movement in the Basque region.

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