After the EU polls, lots of different stories can be explained out of such a complex election. Yesterday we were offering you an exhaustive list of those parties belonging to stateless nations and to national minorities who had succeeded in getting MEPs elected to Brussels. But the information does not end there: in this article, which can be taken as a complement of yesterday's, several other relevant news that should be taken into account to get a more complete idea of the results with regard to stateless nations and national minorities are highlighted:

Former Sardinian President elected. In the lists of the Democratic Party (PD), Renato Soru (who had been President of Sardinia from 2004 to 2008) was elected as MEP. When he won the Sardinian presidency, Soru was leading his own party, pro-autonomy Project Sardinia, which was allied to the PD. After having dissolved Project Sardinia, Soru was the PD candidate to the 2009 Sardinian election, which he lost to Conservative Ugo Cappellacci. Now Soru is coming back to parliament politics.

Spanish party for the right to self-determination. The emergence of Podemos party ("We can", in Spanish) is a major innovation in Spain's party landscape in many ways. One of them is the fact that it brings the most obvious defense of the right to self-determination from a Spain-wide party to date. In its election manifesto, Podemos includes the "defense of the right to decide" ("right to decide" is the name by which the Catalan pro-independence movement mostly refers to the right to hold a referendum on independence) "as a basic democratic right". Furthermore, the party's manifesto explicitly refers to the rights of "stateless nations", and specifies the "recognition of the right of the various peoples of Europe to constitute themselves as such, and to democratically decide their future." Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias says that he would like to build a Spain made up of "many nations", but he also believes that if the Catalans vote in favor of independence, no one should oppose their will.

Pro-Silesian MEP. No Silesian party in Poland has got any representative elected as MEP, but this will not prevent a significant Silesian voice to be raised in the European Parliament: as a member of Poland's Civic Platform, Marek Plura has been elected as new MEP. In a previous article on Nationalia it was explained that Plura was a supporter of the recognition of Silesians as an ethnic group, different from the Polish ethnic group. Plura, Gazeta Katowice writes, is the only MEP who openly says that his nationality is Silesian. During the election campaign, he vowed to defend the rights of the Silesians, and particularly the recognition of the Silesian language.

Greens in Scotland, out of EP only by 2.5 points. Two pro-independence MEPs were elected in the SNP lists, but Scotland could have got yet a third pro-independence MEP is the Scottish Greens had obtained a slightly better result. The ecologist party got 108,000 votes (8% in the Scottish constituency), some 32,000 less than the United Kingdom Independence Party (UKIP) there. With a share of vote of 10.5% instead of 8%, Scottish Greens' candidate Maggie Chapman would have been elected, thus taking the last Scottish seat from the UKIP. Nevertheless, the Green Party said that this was their "best-ever result". The environmentalists also argued that they are on their way to replace the Liberal Democrats "as Scotland's fourth major party."

Occitan list at a low. A couple of weeks ago we mentioned the Occitania for a Europe of the Peoples list, which was running with a political program in favour of stateless nations and peoples, based on European federalism. In France's south-western constituency, the only one where it was contesting the election, Occitania for a Europe of the Peoples had on Sunday 878 votes, 0.03% of the total. The two list leaders Martine Gros and Gèli Grande admitted in a statement that the results had been poor, but they link them to scarce human and financial resources available. The list enjoyed the support of the Occitan Nation Party (PNO), while the Occitan Party (POc) was contesting the election under the Europe Ecology banner, led by José Bové, also in the south-western constituency. Bové, who said he was supporting the the right to self-determination, was re-elected as MEP, and will be thus responsible for carrying the POc message to Brussels.

An awakening for Yorkshire First? English regionalist party Yorkshire First, which is asking for devolution for Yorkshire within the UK, polled better than Gros's list. This was the first election ever for the party, which collected 19,000 votes, 1.5% of the Yorkshire and Humber constituency's total. A "highly significant result," according to candidate Arnold Stewart. This is far from the minimum needed to qualify for a MEP (Yorshire First would heve needed about 10% of the constituency vote), but at least the result shows that the party's message has been accepted by thousands of people and, more specifically, that Yorkshire First has achieved a better result than England's autonomist party English Democrats, which obtained 13,000 votes in the same constituency. However, a lot of work is left for Yorkshire First: the UKIP, which is very reluctant to devolution, got 31% of the votes in Yorkshire and Humber.

Aostan candidate not entering EP.In a previous article we had explained that two center-left Aosta Valley parties (UVP and ALPE) had agreed to field Luca Barbieri as their common candidate, within the Democratic Party (PD) list. But it was very unlikely that Barbieri could secure a seat, since the Aosta Valley was included in Italy's north-western constituency, together with Piedmont, Lombardy and Liguria. Even if the Aostan candidate got many preferential votes in the valley, the small demographic weight of that territory if compared to the other three regions made it virtually impossible for him to be elected. This prediction has been fulfilled: although Barbieri was the candidate with the most preferential votes in Aosta (some 8,000), this was not enough to grant him any of the seats captured by the PD in the north-western constituency. Aosta's Northern League candidate Zeudi Zoso also failed to secure a seat.

Further information:

• Nationalia: Pro-autonomy, pro-sovereignty parties of stateless nations, national minorities surge in EU election