Catalan candidates participate in the first electoral interview in the world via Twitter

Barcelona (ACN).- Representatives from all of the political parties in the current Catalan Parliament responded to citizens’ questions on Monday through the social networking website, Twitter. From 19-20:00 in the evening, Twitter users had the chance to interact with leaders from the Left-Wing Catalan Independence Party (ERC), the Conservative People’s Party (PP), the Anti-Catalan Nationalism Party Ciutadans (C’s) and other members on the ballot for the 28th of November elections from the Catalan Socialist Party (PSC), the Centre-Right Catalan Nationalist Party (CiU) and the Catalan Eco-Socialist Party (ICV). ‘Twittervista’ was organised by the Stic.cat association, known for the Premis Blocs de Catalunya (Catalan Blog Awards). High traffic flow yesterday led to some technical problems during the interview, most of which were solved. The project was a pioneer on a world level.

Just before 19:00, the buzz starting circulating throughout Twitter. ‘Twittervista’ organisers did not forget about the 140-character limit to the innovative project. The short capsules soon became questions for the party representatives.

The representatives from the ERC, PP and C’s parties were party leaders Joan Puigcercós, Alícia Sánchez-Camacho and Albert Rivera (respectively). Marina Geli, Catalan Minister for Health and number 2 on the Girona Province list, participated for the PSC. Number 2 on Parliament’s lists, Joana Ortega, participated for the CiU and the parliamentary spokesperson Dolors Camats participated for the ICV.

For each Twittervista participant there was a representative from Stic.cat and a party consultant to resolve doubts and manage technical problems. A few minutes after Twittervista’s end at 20:00 in the evening, Twitter member Josep Campmajó proclaimed that the interview had “positive results, a success”.

“We had some technical problems because of the capacity of the country’s DSL network to take in all the information”, explained Campmajó. He added that Twitter servers reached too high capacity at times and that the application that they developed for the occasion, Twittervistic.cat, was very robust.