“I offer dialogue and threats are the response,” says Parliament president

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.”