Spanish elections and politics IV / European Parliament campaign, diplomatic crisis with Argentina

[Estrella]

More than half of the votes are counted. Turnout is 62% (+11)

Euskadi (75): Bildu 28 (+7), EAJ 27 (-4), PSE 11 (+1), PP 7 (+1), Vox 1 (=0), Sumar/Podemos 0 (-6)
Araba (25): Bildu 8 (+2), EAJ 8 (-1), PSE 4 (+1), PP 4 (+1), Vox 1 (=0)
Bizkaya (25): EAJ 11 (-1), Bildu 8 (+2), PSE  4 (+1), PP 2 (=0)
Gipuzkoa (25): Bildu 12 (+3), EAJ 9 (-1), PSE 3 (=0), PP 1 (=0)

Looks like a lot of EAJ -> Bildu and Podemos -> Bildu, plus a little Podemos -> PSE.

[Estrella]

More or less final result: EAJ 27, Bildu 27, PSE 12, PP 7, Sumar 1, Vox 1. The EAJ-PSE coalition keeps a 39-36 majority. In popular vote, EAJ leads Bildu 35.2% over 32.4%. Podemos wins a bit more than Vox but fails to get a seat. Turnout was 62.5%.

[Estrella]

Some very anecdotal campaign observations from having spent the past week in Catalonia. Unionist parties are basically invisible outside Barcelona and its suburbs. Smaller provincial towns have Junts and ERC placards on like every other lamppost, plus a good deal of CUP, who must have a huge pile of money or at least activists. Barcelona has a lot of PSC and some Comuns, but they’re still dwarfed by Junts, ERC and CUP. Vox has a few posters too, as does PACMA, some weird Spanish nationalist party appealing to disgruntled PSC voters and a separate campaign by ERC’s youth org. I saw much less PP posters than I’d expect (one) and exactly as much Cs posters as I’d expect (zero). What does all this mean? Idk, probably not much.

It’s kind of funny how basically every poster apart from Junts and CUP is literally just the party leader. CUP have some meaningless vague platitudes about “defending the country”, while Junts have a picture of Puigdemont looking wistfully out of a windows + meaningless vague platitudes about muh català and muh independència.

[Estrella]

Why does left and unionists do so well in Tarragona? It seems that in 2017 Cs did better there than in Barcelona and it’s consistently the best province for PP and second best for PSC/Sumar. Is it just less Catalan-speaking for some reason?