Spanish Prime Minister offers dialogue

The Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has offered to enter into a dialogue with the new government of Catalonia to be formed on the basis of Thursday's regional elections.

The ballot box went dramatically bad for Rajoy. The separatists whom he hoped to eliminate, kept their tight majority in the Catalan parliament of 135 seats. His own People's Party (PP) was almost wiped out.

Rajoy said that according to these elections separatism in Catalonia loses its support, but not as much as he had hoped. The big winner of the ballot box is Inés Arrimadas from the right-wing Liberal Spanish party Ciudadanos. It became the largest in Catalonia, but the three separatist parties maintained their majority in parliament with 48 percent of the votes and seventy seats.