Late last night after a long debate in Congress of a motion put forward by one of the Basque nationalist parties, the Socialist Government agreed to promote the presence of Autonomous Regional teams in international sports competitions.

The Basques and Catalans have been pushing for a long time for the right to compete as Basque Country or Catalonia in international sports events, in April the Interntional Ice Skating Federation took an unprecedented provisional decision in deciding that Catalonia could compete in competitions with a Catalan team. In fact only a few days ago, the Catalan Federation said it was withdrawing its team from the World Championship due to be held this year in Canada to avoid a «conflict» pending the final formal decision regarding Catalan participation which will be made by the International Federation in November.

Without doubt yesterday’s vote in the Spanish Congress will have important repercussions for Spanish sport.

It was received by applause from all the nationalist parties present, and criticism from the Popular Party (the only party to vote against the measure) who are expected to use the vote to back their argument that Spain cannot hope to be strong under a Socialist Government. The Popular Party favours a strong central Government structure in Spain (something which paradoxically has helped the fortunes of regionalist parties in elections) whereas the Socialists say Central Government must be prepared to at least listen to regional governments demands.

Meanwhile, the first televised debate between the two main candidates for the European Elections here, Josep Borrell and Jaime Mayor Oreja, centred around the role of Spain in Europe. El Mundo invites visitors to give their opinion about who won the first televised political debate for ten years.

So far the vote is 63% in favor of Mayor Oreja, and 37% in favor of Borrell.