Elsa Artadi: 'I am no substitute for president Puigdemont'

Catalonia has still no president, almost two months after the election. The pro-independence parties kept the majority in the chamber and agreed on Carles Puigdemont to be the president once again. Yet the Spanish government is challenging his bid and the Spanish Constitutional Court is yet to decide on his nomination as candidate for president. It is likely that the Spanish authorities let him be reinstated, taking into account that he is in Belgium and an arrest warrant is hanging over his head if he returns to Spain. The pro-independence forces are holding talks these days to work out a way out to this situation, and Elsa Artadi is one of the leading officials in the negotiations for Junts per Catalunya, Puigdemont's candidacy, and one of his closest allies. Catalan News has spoken to her.

In the election campaign Mr Puigdemont said it was maybe worth returning to Catalonia to be reinstated even if it meant risking prison. His candidacy came first in the pro-independence bloc. Is he going to fulfil this commitment?

We got a great result on December 21 but we always said during the campaign that for the president to come back we needed him to become the president again, and we are still not at that stage. The aim of our parliamentary group is to have the vote in the Catalan Parliament and for him to be sworn in as President of Catalonia, but we are still at the previous stage. We were close to it on January 30 but the parliament president postponed that session and so we will have to wait a little bit longer for him to legally become the president again under Spanish law. Our aim and our wish is for him to be in the government palace ruling as he should be.

Your plans are to swear in Puigdemont at a distance, which includes amending the Catalan Presidency Law. Do you really think Spain will let you do that?

We believe that the current regulations allow us to do this already, but the parliament president wanted more guarantees, so we’ve been working on providing these guarantees through this amendment to the law. The job of the parliament is to make and to amend laws, so we can’t foresee the Constitutional Court forbidding us from amending a law, because that would be very similar to closing the parliament. We hope they don’t reach this level of intervention in the Catalan Parliament.

Why is your candidacy skeptical about taking Puigdemont’s bid to the European Court of Human Rights, as suggested by the Parliament speaker?

No, that’s not true, our legal team has been working on this for weeks and obviously we have to go through Strasbourg because we believe that the European judiciary is going to be way more just than the Spanish judiciary, so for sure we will be there. What we have criticized is the intervention in our strategy by the parliament president without consulting or without  agreeing on the legal strategy of president Puigdemont.

Some rumors say that you might take take over from Puigdemont as president. Do you feel ready for the post in this event?

This is a media bubble that does not come from us. Obviously it doesn’t come from me; I’m no substitute for president Puigdemont.