The recent CEO survey can easily lead to two opposing conclusions: The first is the existence of underlying electoral currents that invite the alarmists to imagine a country ideologically shattered and with a large presence of disaffected people or supporters of this tendency of ours (constant but intermittent) to throw everything away.But the same data allow for a second reading. Based on cold arithmetic, while accepting that the country is a hornet's nest, the poll does not allow us to imagine many scenarios beyond a more or less nuanced continuation, that is, a government resulting from the pact between PSC and ERC, with the support of the Comuns or Junts, depending on its outcome. It would not be an overwhelming majority, but it would have the atomization of the opposition in its favor, which will turn out to be an insoluble mixture of ideological enemies.The great destabilizing factor that the CEO reveals is the consolidated existence of a dual far-right vote – Catalan and Spanish – around 25% of the votes (more than 30%, if we add the PP). The dazzling irruption of Sílvia Orriols' party is what most catches the attention, because it could go from nothing to 25 deputies, positioning itself in first place in Girona and Lleida, which demonstrates not only the rightward shift of the electorate, a phenomenon common throughout Europe, but also the defensive turn of a part of the independence movement, which has exchanged the naive illusion of ten years ago for radicalism (fruit of repression and the “rendition” of traditional independence), and also due to the fear of national dissolution as a consequence of demographic changes.

The result of the CEO survey puts numbers to a reality that we have all felt on the street, that of the growing voting intention of many people towards Aliança Catalana. What happens is that these numbers are -or would be, rather- a political tsunami and would represent a new page in the history of Catalan society.Going from the two deputies they have now to 23-25 as the CEO says is a tsunami. And for Junts, going from 35 to 13-18 is also one.When a party's main message is as basic as “Save Catalonia” and it is formulated by a leader who is not at all empathetic, at the head of an unknown team, and, even so, their electoral expectations skyrocket, it means that they have connected with the real or suggested discontents of many people, in relation to insecurity in the streets, Islamic radicalism, “massive” immigration, the emigration of well-prepared young Catalans, the decline of the language or fiscal plunder. Many Catalans feel – and what is worse, notice – that the country is slipping through their fingers. And pay attention, because the diagnosis has found a new centrality in which voters from the integrating Catalanism of Junts and Convergència to the bullfighting and Vox Legion Spanish nationalists have come to coincide. 1 out of every 3 votes that Aliança Catalana would win would come from Junts, and 1 out of every 4 votes would come from Vox, united by the flag of Islamophobia. The current parliamentary majority of PSC, Esquerra, Comuns would barely hold on, with the PSC dropping from 42 to 36-38. The government of appeasement, the one of management, is not being sufficient, among other things because the management is clearly improvable.That Aliança Catalana has detected the causes of discontent does not mean it has the capacity to remedy them. In fact, far-right parties are specialists in identifying culprits, but they are not as effective when it comes to finding solutions; on the contrary, because there can be a very short step from harshness to hatred that breaks societies. And with hatred, we are heading towards a new social fracture. Look at the report by Sebastián Marín, about how about 400 people of Moroccan origin gathered last night in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat to follow France-Morocco in the World Cup, in a meeting organized by the Moroccan consulate in Barcelona. Let's take it as a phenomenon: we cannot confuse the effects of radical Islamism, or the crime associated with the poverty of some immigrants, with living alongside neighbors of the Islamic faith. And the far-right, as we know, mixes everything up.The CEO's survey implicates Junts and within Junts, President Puigdemont. He should have been able to live in Catalonia for months now, under the amnesty law, but the judiciary has blocked it. This harms the expectations of a party that heavily relies on the almost iconic figure of the president in exile. At the same time, it is evident that we have gone from a Puigdemont with political initiative, who moved around Europe and overcame arrests and was very present in the media to direct the message, to a Puigdemont who basically only speaks on social media, with an often resentful tone, marked by the almost nine years of exile, the poor results of the negotiation with the PSOE, which conveys the idea that he doesn't care about the PP or the PSOE, because for Catalonia's purposes they are the same. Puigdemont had the status of a political rock star. Today, Aliança Catalana is acting as a substitute for the interest in politics, for the emotional vote, that the Process represented. And Junts will not be able to address it effectively if it does not stop being a party angry with the world (for whatever reason it may have) and begins to generate confidence and pride among the people.

Aliança Catalana is the party that is growing the most in the polls. In the CEO barometer, it is in second position in Parliament and is close to leading the pro-independence bloc. Thousands of potential votes that will have to seek an alternative in the general elections. The party leader, Sílvia Orriols, has committed to incorporating into Aliança Catalana's statutes that they will never run in Spanish elections. Where would these votes go, then?

The latest CEO study has put numbers to the conversations we've all heard at some point, which anticipate an extraordinary leap for Aliança Catalana in Parliament. When a party's main message is as basic as "Save Catalonia" and it's formulated by a leader who is not at all empathetic, at the head of an unknown team, and yet its electoral expectations soar, it means it has connected with the real or suggested discontents of many people, regarding street insecurity, Islamic radicalism, "massive" immigration, the emigration of well-prepared young Catalans, the decline of the language, or fiscal plundering. And, pay attention, because the diagnosis has found a new centrality where voters from the integrationist Catalanism of Junts and Convergència to the bull-and-Legion Spanish nationalists of Vox have come to coincide. One flag unites them: Islamophobia.

The PSC would win the parliamentary elections again if they were held today, despite maintaining a downward trend that would take them from the 42 seats obtained in 2024 to a range of between 36 and 38. However, the most relevant image offered by the barometer of the Centre d'Estudis d'Opinió (CEO) made public yesterday is the consolidation of Aliança Catalana on the right of the parliamentary spectrum. Sílvia Orriols' party climbs to 23-25 deputies (it currently has 2) and clearly surpasses Junts per Catalunya, its main rival, which would lose half of its support to a range of between 16 and 18 deputies. ERC is the other party that is rising, consolidating the second position already predicted by other polls, up to 24-26 deputies.

A first wave in March or April; a second in July and a third around November. It has been a long time since the Centre d'Estudis d'Opinió (CEO) established this periodicity for publishing its barometers, the institute's most robust surveys since it started in 2005 (the first was commissioned by Idescat in 2004). But as of June 15, none have been published this year. What has happened at the CEO? As often happens when things don't go as expected, rumors have begun to do their thing, especially on social media. The fact is that the slowness in renewing the framework agreement to approve the companies that collect data has delayed the survey awarding process by four months. A wait that will soon end, because, as ARA has learned, the fieldwork for the first barometer of 2026 is already underway and the CEO intends to make the survey public during the first half of July.

All polls agree that the PSC will win the next Catalan elections, but the one presented this Friday by the Centre d'Estudis d'Opinió (CEO) is particularly encouraging for the socialists, who would broadly surpass their opponents with a range of between 40 and 47 deputies, growing significantly from the 33 they obtained in 2021. The CEO's poll is also a counter-current poll because it places ERC (31-37) in second position, ahead of Junts (28-34), which would place Pere Aragonès in the fight with Carles Puigdemont to become the candidate for investiture from the pro-independence flank. The director of the CEO, Jordi Muñoz, has spoken of a "technical tie" between the two parties.

If the elections were repeated in October, Salvador Illa's PSC would once again achieve victory with a result of between 39 and 45 deputies, a range that could allow them to improve on the 42 seats they obtained on May 12th. This is what the Barometer of the Centre for Opinion Studies, made public this Thursday, shows, the first since the May 12th elections were held and the investiture negotiations began. According to the survey, Junts would remain in second place with a range of between 31 and 36 seats (they currently have 35) and Esquerra in third, with a range of between 19 and 24 seats (they currently have 20). With this data, the independence movement of Junts, ERC, and the CUP would not sum the absolute majority of 68 deputies even if they achieved the best result assigned to them by the CEO – with the ranges there is a difference of between 1 and 6 seats. They would remain at 66 seats in the best-case scenario, and a possible pro-independence majority would have to go through Aliança Catalana, which could win between 1 and 4 seats and improve on the two they currently have. However, Junts, ERC, and the CUP have already closed the door to negotiating with the far-right pro-independence ultras and, in fact, have signed with the PSC and the commons a commitment to create a sanitary cordon for them in Parliament along with Vox and not to seek or accept their votes. On the other hand, the viability of the PSC, Esquerra, and commons coalition to invest Illa would depend on how well these three parties performed, with a vote frontier between them, and they would regain a majority if they registered a result in the middle or upper range of their forecast.The rest of the parties would remain in the same order as they came out of the ballot boxes on May 12. The PP, the fourth force with 15 deputies, could lose two or improve its result to 18 seats. Vox is the only party that, according to the survey, would have nothing to gain in case of an electoral repeat, because the maximum it could get is between 7 and 11 seats, which are what it already has now. In the best-case scenario for both parties, the sum of PSC and PP is 63 seats. Insufficient, therefore, to form a government without looking for a third partner. It could be the commons, but so far they have refused to repeat the sum that made Jaume Collboni mayor in Barcelona. Regarding the two smaller left-wing groups in the chamber, the CUP could obtain between 1 and 6 deputies (it currently has 4) and the commons, between 5 and 8 (they currently have 6). Jéssica Albiach's party is the one that could suffer the most vote transfer to the PSC in the event of an electoral repeat, up to 10%. The one that best retains its voters is Junts (81% would pick up Carles Puigdemont's ballot again), followed by the PSC, which would again seduce almost 8 out of 10 of its sympathizers on May 12th. For its part, Esquerra has a significant vote leakage towards abstention (30%), although it resists and could still improve results because it incorporates voters who had not voted or had voted blank in the previous elections. The fieldwork for the survey was carried out between June 10th, the day the Parliament was constituted, and July 8th, by which time the scandal of the posters about the Maragalls that implicates ERC and that the ARA uncovered had already been made public the scandal of the posters about the Maragalls that implicates ERC and that the ARA uncovered. In a press conference, the director of the CEO, Jordi Muñoz, explained that the survey already includes part of the possible impact of this information, which was published on July 1st.Who will be the president?

The CEO also asked Catalans who they believe has "more possibilities" of being the next president of the Generalitat: 65% of those surveyed think it is Illa who has the best chance, while 14% believe it is Carles Puigdemont, waiting to know how his return to Catalonia turns out. Furthermore, Illa is the only political leader who passes: he has a 5.2 out of 10, ahead of the acting president, Pere Aragonès (4.8), Laia Estrada and Jéssica Albiach (4.6), Carles Puigdemont (3.9), Sílvia Orriols (3.6), Alejandro Fernández (3.1) and Ignacio Garriga (1.9).Supporters of the PSC, Esquerra, and the commons largely believe that it is a pact between these three parties that should lead Illa to preside over the Generalitat, ahead of other options. The most enthusiastic are the commons: 46% support this sum, a percentage that is 28% in the case of the socialists and 26% in that of the republicans. Regarding Junts, only 27% of their voters believe that Puigdemont has a chance of being invested.The evolution of independentism

According to the Barometer, support for independence is currently at historic lows: only 40% of those surveyed defend independence, the lowest figure in the historical series, which began in 2015 and had never dropped below 41%. On the other hand, there has never been such a high percentage of non-independists: 53% declare themselves to be, a percentage that fits into the trends already detected by previous barometers. Also regarding the relationship with Spain, for the first time since 2015, supporters of Catalonia being an autonomous community outnumber independists: 34% state they are satisfied with the current territorial model, ahead of the 31% who would want it to be an independent state; behind them are supporters of federalism (22%, one point less than in the last Barometer) and of a regional model (7%, also two points less).Furthermore, the drought is no longer the primary concern for Catalans, as it was in March of this year: the top spot is now occupied by "dissatisfaction with politics," followed by access to housing, Catalonia-Spain relations, and immigration. Only 2% believe that water scarcity and climate change are Catalonia's main problem.

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Most Catalans overestimate the presence of immigrants in the region, according to the latest survey by the Center for Opinion Studies (CEO). In fact, the assessment, published this Thursday, confirms that the idea is spreading that the percentage of the population born abroad is practically equal to that of the native population. In response to the question, "Out of every 100 residents, how many would you say were born outside of Spain?", 40% of Catalans believe that half or more of their neighbors are foreign-born, and 14% believe that between 30% and 40% are. However, the average perception of those surveyed—that 36% of the population is immigrant—falls far short of the actual figure: those born outside of Spain make up 25% of the total population, according to data from Idescat published on January 1, 2025.

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Given the rail chaos that followed the fatal accident in Gelida, it's no surprise that Cercanías (commuter rail) is one of the most criticized services by the public. The Center for Opinion Studies (CEO) illustrates this discontent with data, adding that the survey was conducted before the disruptions of recent weeks. Cercanías is the service rated worst by Catalans (4.2), far below the satisfaction level of Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat (7.6), which generates the highest user satisfaction. Young people between 16 and 34 years old give the Cercanías service the lowest ratings, below 4. Although published this Thursday, the data was collected between October 10 and December 8 of last year, that is, a month before the current crisis. In recent weeks, the lack of coordination between the Catalan government, the Spanish state, and the two companies that operate the service, Renfe and Adif, has been one of the most criticized issues. Two officials from Renfe and Adif have been dismissed: the Secretary of State for Transport and Sustainable Mobility, José Antonio Santano, has settled indefinitely in Catalonia And the Catalan government demanded that the central government assume the costs arising from the service's malfunction. All of this has demonstrated that, despite being the service's owner, the Catalan government does not control it.

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The latest CEO barometer is not just a blurry snapshot of the moment; it's a seismograph. And the seismic shift is clear: the far right—both pro-independence and pro-Spanish—is taking center stage in Catalan political debate. The simultaneous rise of Aliança Catalana and Vox is neither an accident nor a passing phenomenon: it's the consequence of a deep-seated discontent that traditional parties have thus far failed to manage.

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This week Emmanuel Macron has announced a volunteer program in France to recruit young people in the army and the The group of states of the European Union are heading to reinstate mandatory military service. For now, Spain is an exception—the Spanish government has always maintained that it is not on the table—but the perception that a war in Europe is possible has been spreading among the population. Or at least that is the message that governments of different political stripes are conveying to their respective public opinions, at a time when—it must be said—they also need a pretext with public support to increase military spending, as demanded by NATO and Donald Trump.

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One of the conclusions of the latest barometer from the Center for Opinion Studies (CEO), published this Monday, is that voters for Aliança Catalana and Vox "are becoming increasingly similar," states the organization's director, Joan Rodríguez Teruel. In fact, one of the trends highlighted by this latest survey is that voters for Ignacio Garriga's party are increasingly drawn to Silvia Orriols's party. The convergence between the two parties has long been evident in the Catalan Parliament, where both avoid vetoing each other's initiatives, for example, those of a xenophobic nature. Now, the CEO's figures confirm this trend.

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The far right continues its rise in Catalonia: Aliança Catalana would climb to 19-20 seats and tie with Junts (19-20) for third place, according to the latest barometer from the Center for Opinion Studies (CEO). However, Junts remains ahead in vote share (13-15%) compared to Aliança (11-14%). The poll also indicates that the PSC remains in first place, but is stagnating (38-40); in fact, it would lose two seats compared to the last barometer published in July. ERC, for its part, would gain ground and become the second largest party (22-23), ahead of Junts. The upward trend of the far right would also be reflected in Vox (13-14) making overtaking in the PP (12-13). Comuns would remain at 6 seats, as would the CUP, with 3-4. The barometer was compiled between October 13 and November 11. It was during this period that Junts made the decision to break with the Spanish government and enter the opposition.

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For the first time in history, the Generalitat's Center for Opinion Studies (CEO) asked respondents which party their parents belonged to: whether their parents had any specific affiliations or identities, and whether they currently maintain them. So, is being a Socialist or a Convergent member something inherited? The conclusions of the latest CEO barometer from July are mixed: while it's true that some political parties manage to maintain this identity from generation to generation, others lose it and move to other parties or simply cease to identify with any political organization. "We were interested in studying the generational transmission of parties to see if there is an inheritance from parents to children, especially because in recent years in Catalonia, new parties have emerged and others have also disappeared; there has been an electoral shift between parties, and new generations have also joined the electorate," explains Joan Rodríguez Teruel.

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This week, the CEO Barometer has left several headlines on electoral trends in Catalonia: a rise of the Catalan Alliance, which was already coming from the previous wave; a stagnation of the PSC after years of rise, and above all the growth that Vox can opt for.

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Today that The CEO survey shows a rise for Vox and the Catalan Alliance again., it is an appropriate day to remember that neither of these two parties has the solution to the problems of Catalan society, because they live off hatred of immigrants (especially Muslims) and, in the case of Vox, also of the Catalan nation.

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If the forecasts of the latest CEO Barometer were to be fulfilled On the high side of the fork, and if Vox were to obtain 14 deputies in the Parliament of Catalonia, and Aliança Catalana 11, their total (the extreme right-wing groups add up, even if one calls itself Spanish and the other declares itself pro-independence) would be 25 deputies, that is, 18.5% of representation. Almost 20% of ultra-nationalist deputies is a percentage that some will find scarce compared to the parliaments of other countries (the extreme right is the third force in Spain and Germany, the second in France, and directly governs in Italy), but in any case it is a worrying percentage.

]]> The far right continues to grow in Catalonia, both the pro-Spanish and pro-independence sides. On the one hand, the Catalan Alliance is expected to increase its support, according to the latest poll by the Generalitat's Center for Opinion Studies (CEO) from this second quarter, rising to between 10 and 11 seats compared to the two it currently holds in the Parliament. On the other hand, Vox is also expected to have more electoral support in Catalonia, to the point that it could overtake the PP. In any case, the Catalan Socialist Party (PSC) would still win the Parliament elections, followed by Junts and Esquerra.

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What do Catalans think about the construction of 50,000 public housing units and the rent cap? How many of them want to buy a home? This article explores Catalan housing preferences in depth.

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