Voters in the economically powerful region of Catalonia have punished the leader who made a referendum over breaking away from Spain a central plank of his campaign, seeing his party’s majority reduced by a dozen seats.

Four separatist parties in Spain’s Catalonia last night looked set to win a majority in regional elections yesterday, partial results showed, but the main one was on course to lose some seats, possibly undermining its bid to call an independence referendum.

A man whose wife and father-in-law were killed in an IRA bombing will be among a wide variety of speakers attending the year’s Sinn Féin summer school which gets under way in Co Cork this evening.