One week from now there will be elections in Catalunya to elect the new Parliament.
I am still trying to make sense of it all but little by little am getting more informed.

The current President is Artur Mas. His party is Convergence and Union otherwise known as CiU. All the parties have names like this – ERC, EUiA, PPC, ICV, SI etc etc.
Goodness, it’s no wonder it has taken me three years to even begin to understand.
The streets are now lined with posters, dominated by the faces of the candidates. People will vote for a party, choosing one piece of paper with a list of all that parties candidates in order of importance and will place this in the voting box. No ticking of boxes or putting a cross against a name.
The more votes a party has, the more candidates are elected. The first named on the list will be the leader, eg Artur Mas, and the candidates will get in, according to their place on the list.
How do they decide who gets a high or low place on the list? After all, if you are at the bottom then you are very unlikely to get elected.
In CiU for example, the leader decides who goes where.
However in SI – Solidaritat Catalana per la Independencia – the list is created more democratically, according to a voting system.

Here is a list of the political parties of Catalunya.
I wonder who the Pirates of Catalunya are?
Here’s what I found on Wikipedia:-

Pirates of Catalonia is a political party in the Catalonia region of Spain. The party is based on the model of the Swedish Pirate Party and is a member of the Pirate Parties International. it supports intellectual property reform, open access to culture and knowledge, transparency and Direct Democracy.
The party was founded in August 2010 and was officially registered as a political party in October.

Of course the main item of interest at the moment regarding the coming elections is that fact that Artur Mas has said he will call for a referendum about independence.  And this is causing a lot of ripples in the relationship between Catalunya and the government in Madrid.
Here is a really interesting article on the reasons for session and the viability of a Catalan state.