[Catalonia]

The economy is struggling to emerge from a recent recession ...

Huh? The recession ended in Q3 or Q4 of 2001. Unemployment is relatively high, of course, but unemployment does not a recession make (by the by, a 6.1% unemployment rate is hardly disastrous, only a few tenths of a percentage point above the natural rate of unemployment, and it is always a lagging indicator)

[petercooper]

on unemployment>>
"And an unemployment rate near 6 percent is much too low to influence many votes. For one thing, unemployment is highly concentrated among younger and less-educated people -- two groups with a very low voter turnout. Among married men and women, the unemployment rate is only 3.8 percent."

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/alanreynolds/ar20030911.shtml