Spain's Catalonia votes 'yes' to more regional power

MADRID - Spain's Catalonia region voted overwhelmingly in favour of a statute giving it more autonomy today, but low turnout in the ballot immediately sparked questions about its validity.

According to official data, with 99.6 per cent of the votes counted, 73.9 per cent of Catalans said "yes" to a fiercely contested statute that has fired debate on autonomy in Spain's regions and reawakened sensitivities that date back to the Civil War of the 1930s.

But just under half of the 5 million Catalans eligible to vote did so, with 50.6 per cent abstaining from the ballot.

The leader of the right-leaning main opposition party Mariano Rajoy said the result showed a lack of support for the central government-backed project.

"This has been a demonstration of common sense ... Catalans have not supported (Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez) Zapatero's personal project, two out of three of them were not in favour," Rajoy said, counting those who abstained as equal to a "no" vote.

Zapatero said the vote was valid and urged Rajoy and other political parties campaigning for a "no" vote to move on.

"Three of four Catalans who turned out have supported this project ... and have fully ratified the text. The statute gives the use of a new tool for self-rule as well as for diversity (of political interests)," he told reporters.

The referendum gives Spain's wealthiest region a greater slice of its income tax and more spending, and was considered a test of strength of the central government.

The statute has been the subject of dispute between regional and national political parties for more than a year, centering on a phrase that says Catalonia perceives itself as "a nation".

Compromise on that phrase in the final statute was eventually rejected by both ends of the political spectrum -- the right-leaning Popular Party (PP), which says it is a threat to Spanish unity, and the Catalan nationalist party Esquerra Republicana (ERC), which says it does not go far enough.

Zapatero's government, seen as backing more autonomy to Spain's already powerful regions, campaigned for a "yes" result.

But the PP accuses the prime minister of selling out in both Catalonia and in the Basque Country, where the government aims to start peace talks with ETA separatist guerrillas after they declared a ceasefire in March.

- REUTERS