Voters in Catalonia are heading to the polls on Sunday to cast their ballots in a snap regional election that will gauge the strength of the waning independence movement and indicate whether the conciliatory approach of Spain’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has paid off, Ednews reports via The Guardian.

The election was called in March by the Catalan president, Pere Aragonès, a member of the moderate pro-independence Catalan Republican Left party (ERC), after opposition parties voted down the budget proposed by his minority government.

The ERC had governed in coalition with Together for Catalonia (Junts), the centre-right, hardline pro-independence party led by the self-exiled former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, until festering disagreements led the latter to abandon the government in October 2022.

Sunday’s vote comes six and a half years after Puigdemont plunged Spain into its worst political crisis in decades by staging an unlawful, unilateral referendum on regional independence and following it up with a unilateral declaration of independence.

The conservative Spanish government of the time responded by sending in thousands of police officers to stop people voting, often violently. It then sacked Puigdemont and his cabinet, dissolved the regional parliament and took direct control of Catalonia. Puigdemont fled Spain to avoid arrest, leaving other key figures in the independence movement to face trial and prison.