MADRID, (Reuters) – Inhabitants of a small Spanish town voted yesterday for the region of Catalonia to secede from Spain in a poll which, though symbolic, adds to pressure on the minority Spanish government as it struggles to combat recession.
The referendum in Arenys de Munt came as Spain’s socialist government braces for a court ruling by Spain’s Constitutional Court to overturn a special statute setting out the boundaries of Catalan autonomy within the Spanish state.
Many Catalans, including Catalan members of Spain’s ruling Socialist Party, feel that such a ruling would ignore legitimate aspirations of a people with hundreds of years of separate identity and which retains its own language.
