The Catalan Parliament is to tackle a crucial question this Monday afternoon when it decides how to respond to the decision of Spain's Central Electoral Commission, ratified by the Supreme Court, on the cancellation of Quim Torra's status as an MP in the Catalan chamber and the subsequent communication by the Provincial Electoral Commission for Barcelona notifying the speaker of parliament that he has 48 hours to advise who will take Torra's seat in the chamber. Although the loss of a seat does not, at least in principle and in any known doctrine, entail the loss of the post of president of Catalonia, it is clear that it infers the assumption of powers which are inappropriate for an administrative body such as an electoral authority, and which, moreover, are now endorsed by the Supreme Court.
From the meeting of Parliament, its procedural committee the Bureau and, in the final instance, the president himself as the highest representative of the institution, one of three options should emerge: that Quim Torra continues to be a member of Parliament for all intents and purposes, that is, that nothing changes and he is able to vote in the plenary sessions like any other of the 135 deputies; that he is a member of the house but does not take part in voting and is left with a hazy status, similar to the case at the beginning of the legislature with the elected representatives who were in exile or in prison; or, he loses his rights and his status as a member of the house, as demanded by the unionist opposition parties Cs, PSC and PP.
Depending on the path taken and the level of consensus reached between the governing pro-independence parties JxCat and ERC, there will either be one set of consequences or another, and this will affect the legislature. Since last Friday the tension between the two parties has been more than evident and there have clearly been stealthy moves by each side to put the blame on its adversary and mark its own position. On Sunday night, civil society group the ANC came out in defence of president Torra and demanded that Parliament guarantee his rights as MP and president, and preserve the sovereignty of Parliament.
The unity that was forged on January 4th in the special parliamentary session which ratified Torra as an MP gives a clue, but a lot of water has gone under the bridge since then. The Supreme Court has made its pronouncement, the Electoral Commission has put on the pressure, and the Cs party, in its quest to dispatch everything to the justice system, has threatened to take president Torrent to court and denounce him for disobedience. All this, on the eve of the return of the political prisoners who were members of the Catalan government in 2017, the six of whom are appearing on Tuesday before Parliament's commission on article 155, in a session which will be massively charged with symbolism.