Parliament president to ‘answer in the courts’ if Puigdemont takes office warns Madrid

The Spanish government sent a blunt message to the new Catalan Parliament president, Roger Torrent, on Friday: should he bend the regulations to allow Carles Puigdemont to take office from a distance, he will have to “answer in the courts”.

The spokesman for Mariano Rajoy’s executive, Íñigo Méndez de Vigo, warned Torrent about “committing past errors”, advised him to “learn from what has happened” and insisted that the regulations allow “no possibility” of Puigdemont becoming Catalan president.

As far as the Spanish government is concerned, the Catalan Parliament regulations leave no margin for interpretation, with Méndez de Vigo insisting that “there exists no political possibility of taking decisions outside the law.”