Pro-independence party the Catalan Republican Left (ERC) has decided to defy the decision of Spain's Constitutional Court (TC) and will accept the delegated votes by three MPs-elect who are currently in exile - Carles Puigdemont, Lluís Puig and Rubén Wagensberg - in the constitutive session for the Parliament of Catalonia next Monday, June 10th. Through a statement, ERC has argued that "the vote of the three exiles must be counted to prevent the TC from altering majorities and blocking, for example, the votes to achieve an anti-repressive Bureau". In this regard, the party recalled that in the constitutive session of 2021, Ernest Maragall, who was then part of the provisional Age Committee, cast a vote in favour of accepting Lluís Puig's delegated vote, despite the fact that in the end it was not accepted because the other committee members, deputies for the Socialists (PSC) and far-right Vox, opposed it.
In the Age Committee, the provisional body chosen on the basis of age to officiate until the new Parliament's officers are voted in, there will be, as the youngest MP in the house, the ERC deputy Mar Besses, who has publicly positioned herself in support of the party line through a message on X. "Only the people of Catalonia have the power to define the majorities of the Parliament", she stated, recalling that this has always been ERC's position. The other members of the committee will be Agustí Colomines, of Junts+, and Júlia Calvet, from Vox, so taking into account that the body will have a pro-independence majority (two votes to one), it is foreseeable that they will accept the delegated vote of the deputies in exile. Thus, they would challenge the ruling by the Constitutional Court, which on Wednesday declared the nullity of the 2023 agreements made by the Bureau of Parliament that until now established a system allowing voting by Puig, who, as an exile, also held a seat in the legislature which has just ended.
Només el poble de Catalunya té la potestat de definir les majories del Parlament.
— Mar Besses i Casanovas (@marbesses) June 6, 2024
Això és el que ha defensat el @JoventRepublica i @Esquerra_ERC i això és el que defensarem sempre i arreu.
The case of Wagensberg does not pose a problem, since even though the ERC deputy is in exile in Switzerland, because of the Democratic Tsunami case, he is also on medical leave and this status is explicitly allowed to permit delegation of voting. The situation is more complicated in the case of Puigdemont and Puig, since, even if the age committee approves of the delegation of votes by one or both of them, it would be feasible for a parliamentary party to present a request for reconsideration or appeals to the TC over this authorization, with the possible consequence that - as an interim measure - the Constitutional Court could declare the vote delegation agreement null and void a few days later, and could even put in doubt the election of officers - the members of the Bureau, including the new speaker - for the new Parliament.