The election of Josep Rull as the new speaker of the Parliament of Catalonia, on the second ballot, signifies the return of a member of the Catalan government of the October 1st 2017 referendum. Also, a surprising accord, even if there was a lot of tension on the way there, between Together for Catalonia (Junts), with 35 deputies, the Republican Left (ERC) with 20 and the CUP with four, who took advantage of the disagreement between the Catalan Socialists (PSC) and the People's Party (PP) to impose a pro-independence speaker and, also, control the majority on the Bureau. In a heart-stopping political session, the independentists played their cards with skill and turned upside down what the hemicycle of Parliament reflects. They found water in the desert and will have four members out of the seven that make up the Bureau. It is true that, in reality, there are 3 from the PSC, 2 from Junts and 2 from ERC, rather than a sum of four, since now the numbers are not as before. But considering that they only have 59 seats out of 135 (61 if you add the two from the far-right Catalan Alliance), the final result of the session could not be more optimistic for them.
The election of the speaker of the Parliament will be key in this legislature, since it is in his hands to give the nomination to Salvador Illa or Carles Puigdemont for investiture as president. The Socialists had made it known that they would play their cards carefully, as the winning party of the May 12th election, so that the position did not escape them. It is possible that they expected a more docile PP that was ready to repeat the Collboni operation at the Barcelona City Council: giving the mayoral staff to the Socialists in exchange for nothing. Feijóo, on the other hand, set conditions: a member of the Bureau, just to start talking. It didn't seem like a very high price in exchange for securing a majority, but the PSC insisted that everything had to be for free. As well, they themselves had nothing guaranteed with this move, since the Comuns were not very open to a three-way operation.
There was also the option of a Republican Left speaker, which was what the Socialists were hoping to push forward during the weekend. From the PSC, this was taken for granted, convinced that the level of confrontation between Junts and ERC would not allow either an agreement or for the speaker's job to go to Puigdemont's party. Something made them abandon this idea and what seemed rock solid on Saturday faded away in the following hours. It is likely that Salvador Illa then gave up on his initial idea and thought that the effort involved in putting all the pieces back together would be significant and that it was better to focus efforts on moving ahead with the investiture as Catalan president. What is also obvious is that an agreement between the Socialists and the PP would have provided much happiness in some circles in Madrid, but it is likely that it would have closed options with ERC, a party that Illa needs in any cases to go ahead with the investiture.
Josep Rull meets the conditions to hold the country's second most senior institutional position with authority, knowledge, institutional sense and, above all, dialogue
In any case, the election of Rull as speaker of Parliament is a success, since the Junts politician meets the necessary conditions to hold the country's second most senior institutional position with authority, knowledge, institutional sense and, above all, dialogue, something which will be very important considering that there are eight political parties in Parliament. His first task will be to receive the leaders of the parliamentary groups to find out if any candidate has options to succeed in the investiture vote. For this he has ten working days, according to the accepted version that has always been taken for granted and that so far no one has disputed. However, there are lawyers who think that this period is not so hard and fast in the rules and that it can be added to the two months, and that if after this longer period there is no investiture, new elections must be called.
It will be interesting to see how this issue is resolved if any party raises it, as well as whether the first option is given to Illa or to Puigdemont. A priori, everything indicates that the Socialist leader would like to be the first and, so far, Junts has not expressed a special preference, while making clear their view that they have more support if they add in ERC and, consequently, the PSC should abstain, something that the Socialists reject. And in the middle of all is the Republicans' commitment to consult the party's grassroots on their position regarding an investiture vote. The dance is already in motion.