"Mas will govern," headlines La Vanguardia, in the wake of elections in Catalonia, which resulted in a clear victory for the centre-right Catalan nationalist Convergencia i Unió (CiU) and its leader, Artur Mas. CiU won 62 of the 135 seats in the regional parliament, taking many of them from the outgoing coalition, composed of socialists, Greens and left-wing independents, which only obtained 48 seats as opposed to 70 in the previous administration. With 18 MPs, the Catalan People’s Party (PPC) will now become the third force in the region. The Barcelona daily notes that the CiU has pledged to obtain a special economic and tax conditions for Catalonia, comparable with those of the Basque country. It has also promised to “overcome limitations to the Catalan Statute of Autonomy imposed by the Spanish Constitutional Court.”
The leader of Greece’s leftist alliance SYRIZA is the new bright hope of Greek politics. Steering a course between pragmatism and the rhetoric of class warfare, he has unsettled Berlin, and not just those who back Angela Merkel's austerity policies. 
Europe’s economic woes have forced us to try to understand the secret Olympian world of global finance. But now that we pay more attention to bond yields and stability mechanisms, isn’t it clear that the experts up on their lofty peaks don’t know what’s going on either? 
This year’s Eurovision Song Contest is hosted by Azerbaijan, a country that is far from being a model democracy. An Estonian journalist takes a critical look at the deferential treatment enjoyed by the regime in Baku.