On Thursday, Salvador Illa’s candidacy for the presidency of the Catalan government will be voted on. If successful, it will put an end to 14 consecutive years of pro-independence governments.
Since Tuesday, the socialist Salvador Illa is officially a candidate to preside over the new regional government of Catalonia and his investiture in the post will be voted on Thursday by the regional deputies, announced the president of the Catalan Parliament.
Following a round of hearings with the parties that elected deputies in the Catalan elections on May 12, Josep Rull announced late in the morning, in Barcelona, that Illa is a candidate to preside over the Generalitat (as the executive of Catalonia, an autonomous community in northeastern Spain, is known) and three parliamentary groups have guaranteed that they will vote in favour of his investiture in office.
Illa’s investiture will have the support of the socialistsby the independent Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC) and by the Comunes (non-independent left), thus guaranteeing the minimum of 68 votes for an absolute majority in the regional parliament.
If successful, Illa’s investiture will put an end to 14 consecutive years of pro-independence governments in Cataloniaduring which the region went through a process of attempted self-determination that culminated in a unilateral declaration of independence in 2017.
The “new political cycle in Catalonia” arose from the regional elections of May 12, in which the socialists obtained more votes and the independentists obtained “poor results”, as the ERC itself acknowledged last week.
ERC, “understanding the results” and assuming that it was not possible to have a new government in Catalonia led by independentists, since these formations had lost the absolute majority in the regional parliament, negotiated the viability of a left-wing executive with the PSC (regional structure of the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party, PSOE).
The other major pro-independence party, Junts per Catalunya (JxCat, conservative), led by former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, who has been living in Belgium since 2017 to escape Spanish justice, was in favour of a repeat of the elections and condemned ERC for being willing to put an end to the Catalan separatist front and make a “pro-Spanish” government viable for the region.
Puigdemont now threatens to disrupt Illa’s investiture sessionThe separatist leader, elected as a member of parliament in the May elections, has guaranteed that he will return to Catalonia with the aim of being present at the plenary session on Thursday and admitted that he will most likely be arrested.
If Puigdemont is arrested, several parties have already said they will request the suspension of the plenary session.
To avoid a repeat of the elections, the Catalan parliament has until August 26 to elect the president of the Generalitat.
ERC and JxCat negotiated with the Socialists of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, an amnesty for Catalan separatists that, although already in force, has not yet been granted by the judges to Puigdemont, who remains the subject of an arrest warrant in Spanish territory.
The political situation in Catalonia has had and should continue to have a direct impact on the governance of Spain, since Sánchez’s executive depends on the parliamentary support of both ERC and JxCat.
JxCat leaders have already admitted to having reviewed support for Sánchez in the Spanish Parliament due to, for example, the socialists’ stance on the possible arrest of Puigdemont, highlighting that the judges refuse to apply a law to the separatist leader, which grants amnesty, approved by an absolute majority of the country’s deputies.
Salvador Illa’s PSC won the most votes in the Catalan regional elections on May 12. JxCat came second and ERC, which currently leads the Catalan government, third.
The Comunes (left), the Popular Party (PP, right), Vox (far right) and the Catalan Alliance (far right pro-independence) also elected deputies.
Source: Observadora
