Polling stations opened at 09:00 a.m. and will close at 08:00 p.m., with results expected at around midnight. A total of 5.6 million people are eligible to vote in the region.
In 2017, voter turnout in the parliamentary elections reached nearly 35 percent in the first four hours.
In late September 2020, when the Spanish Supreme Court confirmed regional leader Quim Torra ineligible to hold any elected office for one and a half years, prompting the need to schedule an early election.
According to a recent survey released by the Social Investigation Center (CIS), the Socialists' Party of Catalonia has the highest support of 23.7 percent. The Republican Left of Catalonia party comes second with 19.9 percent of the votes, followed by the Together for Catalonia party with 14.6 percent. All the three parties have shown support for Catalan independence from Spain.