Five years have gone by from 2017 to 2022, and the issue of Catalonia's Unilateral Declaration of Independence (UDI) is still simmering. This Tuesday, the Bureau of the Catalan Parliament overturned a popular legislative initiative (ILP) that called for the lifting of the Unilateral Declaration of Independence, approved by the Catalan chamber on October 27, 2017 and not implemented by the Catalan government, which was terminated when the Spanish government imposed Article 155 to place Catalonia under its direct rule. As digital media NacióDigital reported and parliamentary sources have confirmed, the initiative was not accepted for processing by the Bureau. The Junts party (with only one vote due to the suspension of Laura Borràs) and the CUP (1 vote) voted in favour of admission to the procedure, while ERC (2 votes) abstained and the Socialists of the PSC (2 votes) voted against it. Thus, the situation of a two-against-two tie caused the initiative to fail. In their report, the parliamentary lawyers concluded that it could not be admitted to the proceedings because it did not fall within the competencies of Parliament.
The text, registered by six women in a private capacity, as the ILP procedure makes possible, argued that "the decisions that affect our territory must be taken solely and exclusively by the Parliament of Catalonia". And it added: "For this reason, and considering that the declaration of independence approved by this parliament remains valid as of today, since no competent institutional body has repealed its validity, we demand the lifting of the suspension of the declaration of independence of the Catalan Republic, so that this Parliament can exercise its functions in its full right". The presenters of the initiative were Raquel Santiago, Mercè Zamora, Gemma Masferrer, Núria Torras, Mònica Gómez and Maria Isabel Muntané.
The initiative did not prosper due to the abstention of ERC, whose representatives assured that they has done so "in coherence" with similar proposals when they have arrived, the last time being in 2019. "An ILP does not have the support either in its the political route or technical format to give coverage to this request. If that were the case, it would have already happened with ERC contributing to it," justified the party. And they continued: "We will not contribute to the disillusionment and frustration of independence. We will not contribute to taking steps that don't go anywhere. We have learned from the path taken so far and we will not lead the independence movement to repeat mistakes. We want the independence of Catalonia to build a socially just country for the people. And we want to do it by taking firm, useful and honest steps with the citizens of this country."
More claims over Borràs's advisers
Yet again this week, the Bureau has had to respond to a text, in this case from the extreme right Vox party, demanding that the six advisers employed by Laura Borràs, currently suspended as speaker and MP, be also suspended from their jobs and salaries. The response of the chamber's governing body is again that this automatic suspension does not apply. In any case, parliamentary sources point out that this is an "unprecedented situation" and that a proposal must be sought, which "doesn't exist yet". The deputy speaker acting as speaker, Alba Vergés, has not set any deadlines, but these same sources remark that the solution must arrive "as soon as possible".