Mixed reaction to new Parliament president’s first speech

While the Catalan Parliament celebrated the opening of another political term with the appointment of a new parliament president, Roger Torrent’s first speech in the chamber did not convince everyone.

The CUP party leader in the Parliament, Carles Riera, later said that the speech by the young Esquerra party (ERC) MP, who was elected in the second round of voting on Wednesday, “betrayed” the spirit of the push for independence. “It establishes a line of politics that we do not share at all; it does not work towards either bringing about the republic nor consolidating the independence bloc,” he said.

Puigdemont's JxCAT welcomes Torrent's appointment

Yet, if Torrent’s speech did not go far enough for CUP in committing the Parliament to pursuing a Catalan republic, the pro-independence Together for Catalonia (JxCAT) group welcomed his address, in which he pledged to work towards restoring the Catalan institutions suspended by the central government.

JxCAT MP, Laura Borràs, told Catalan News: “If Esquerra Republicana has chosen him it means he will be a person who believes in dialogue, and in his speech he said he would be the president of the whole parliament, and that is a good sign and so we hope everything will be fine.”

“No hope Torrent will be impartial,” says Cs

Unsurprisingly considering Torrent is an ERC party member, Inés Arrimadas, the leader of the Ciutadans (Cs) party, which got the most votes in the December 21 election but has no parliamentary majority, said her party had "no hope that Mr Torrent will turn out to be impartial and someone who can be the president of all MPs, but rather a president who has already publicly stated his commitment to independence.”

Yet, Torrent’s conciliatory tone did draw a cautious welcome from the Catalan branch of Spain’s ruling People’s Party. One of its members in Catalonia, Santi Rodríguez, said that despite his left-wing and pro-independence credentials, Torrent “gave a speech with a conciliatory tone that makes us think that perhaps there has been a break with the line taken by the previous Parliament president.”

Socialists: Torrent must move “from words to actions”

Another of the unionist parties, the PSC Catalan socialists, also welcomed Torrent’s use of words such as “respect, coexistence and diversity,” but party spokeswoman, Eva Granados, warned the new Parliament president that he will have to move “from words to actions”.