Court to decide on Saturday whether Puigdemont’s bid for president is legal

The president of Spain’s Constitutional Court, Juan José González Rivas, has called an extraordinary plenary session to be held on Saturday at 1pm, in order to decide whether Puigdemont’s bid to be president is legal or not. An appeal filed by the Spanish government against Puigdemont’s candidature will be studied by magistrates. Rajoy’s cabinet claims that the reinstatement as Catalan leader would be unconstitutional.

The Spanish government also demanded that the Constitutional Court suspend the Catalan Parliament's plenary session in which the investiture debate will be held, if Carles Puigdemont is candidate for president.

The appeal was approved on Friday by the Council of Ministers, despite the Spanish Council of State, a consultive body, seeing no breach of law in Puigdemont. It will be up to the Constitutional Court’s judges to decide on the legality of the process.

Catalan pro-independence officials have deemed this latest move by the Spanish government as a “coup d’etat.” However, Spain maintains that it has a “sufficient legal basis” as well as a “political and legal obligation” to prevent Puigdemont being sworn in once more. They claim that he cannot be invested at a distance and, if he returns, he will be detained as soon as he sets foot on Spanish soil. On Friday, border control between France and Catalonia was tightened.

The Catalan Parliament president, Roger Torrent, reaffirmed that Carles Puigdemont is still the candidate for president in the upcoming investiture debate. In a statement on Friday afternoon, he made clear that his nomination of Puigdemont still stands despite Madrid’s challenge. “It is a legal fraud directly against voters, MPs and democracy,” was Torrent’s reaction to the Spanish government’s appeal of his nomination in the Constitutional Court. He announced that the Catalan chamber’s legal service will analyse the move.  

Earlier in the day, the Spanish vice president, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, confirmed that the Spanish government is challenging Puigdemont’s candidacy for president in the Constitutional Court, so as to “prevent a fugitive from being sworn in as president” of Catalonia. According to the Spanish vice president, the fact that Puigdemont has an arrest warrant against him on Spanish soil “impedes him from being president.”