BARCELONA: Catalonia’s parliament is set to elect a new leader for the Spanish region on Thursday, but the planned return of exiled separatist leader Carles Puigdemont, even as he faces arrest, threatens to derail the event.
After months of negotiations following inconclusive regional elections in May, the leader of the local branch of Spain’s ruling Socialists – Salvador Illa, who is close to Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez – is poised to become Catalonia’s new leader.
The Socialists won the most seats in the election in the wealthy northeastern region without winning a majority, but Illa secured the support of a small far-left party and the left-wing Catalan separatist party ERC.
That would give him the necessary 68 votes to be elected in Catalonia’s 135-member parliament as head of the regional government.
The debate on the investiture is due to start in the Catalan parliament at 10:00 (08:00 GMT).
But the vote could be overturned if Puigdemont – who fled to Belgium shortly after Catalonia’s failed independence bid in 2017 to avoid prosecution – returns to Spain and is arrested.
The secretary general of Puigdemont’s hard-line separatist JxCAT party said he would call for the vote to be suspended if that happened.
If a new Catalan regional government is not formed by August 26, new elections will be held in October.
In a video posted on social media X on Wednesday, Puigdemont said he had started his “return journey from exile” to take part in the vote, saying it should be “normal” for him to be there.
“To do so risks arrests that would be arbitrary and illegal, evidence of a democratic anomaly that we have a duty to condemn and fight,” he added.
JxCAT announced the “institutional reception” for Puigdemont at 9:00 a.m. Thursday outside the Catalan parliament in Barcelona, an hour before the start of the investiture.
Puigdemont led Catalonia’s regional government in 2017 when, despite a court ban, it pushed through an independence referendum, followed by a short-lived declaration of independence.
While Spain’s parliament passed an amnesty law in May for those involved in the botched secession bid, the Supreme Court ruled on July 1 that the measure would not fully apply to Puigdemont.
Sanchez agreed to the amnesty law in exchange for JxCAT’s crucial support in the Spanish parliament for his fragile minority government, sparking huge street protests against the right-wing measure.
He now faces opposition from parts of his own socialist party as well as the right over a proposal to give Catalonia full control over taxes collected in the region.
The measure was promised to the ERC in exchange for the party’s support for Illo in Thursday’s investiture vote.
The proposal has been one of the main demands of Catalan independence parties for decades, but critics say it would deprive the central state of a substantial source of revenue. It still has to be approved by the Spanish national parliament.
A similar system already exists in the Spanish Basque Country, where the independence movement is also active.
If Illa passes Thursday’s investiture vote, he will become the first head of Catalonia’s regional government not from the separatist camp since 2010.
The former health minister defended the tax deal reached with the ERC, saying they were “for the benefit of all Catalans”.
“These are agreements to improve our financing without harming anyone and they maintain the criteria of solidarity,” he said on Saturday after securing the ERC’s support. But former Socialist Deputy Prime Minister Alfonso Guerra warned that the tax deal opens “the way to a federal system and the independence of Catalonia”.
