The Autonomous Elections of 1 November 2006 in Catalonia

Abstract

In this paper, we present the facts and results of the 2006 autonomous election in Catalonia. After a review of the political context and the campaign, we present and analyze the results at electoral and institutional level and the main reasons behind the stability and change in the electoral behaviour. We finally discuss the implications of the results for the political system at Basque and Spanish levels.

Keywords:

• Spanish politics
• Catalan politics
• regional elections
• multi-level politics
• electoral campaign
• electoral behaviour
• abstention
• regional institutions
• nationalism
• nationalist parties

Acknowledgement

This article is adapted from the Castilian version, which appeared in the Informe Comunidades Autónomas 2006. The authors would like to thank the Instituto de Derecho Publico responsible for these annual studies. This article has also benefited from a wider research project on ‘Political competition in multilevel systems’ (SEC 2003-00418), granted by the Spanish R+D Program.

Notes

For additional details on this process, see Vintró (2006, 2007) and Pallarés and Muñoz (2007).

To gain an insight into electoral behaviour in Catalonia, see Pallarés and Font (1995), Pallarés (2000) and Riba (2000).