Parliament speaker looks for presidential candidate

The Catalan parliament speaker Roger Torrent launched a new round of talks to choose a candidate for president of the Catalan government on Monday. Yet, his success in finding someone with the support needed to secure the post and put an end to the current political stalemate is far from assured.

In the first meeting of the day, representatives of the far-left CUP party told Torrent what they already announced on Saturday: they would not back Jordi Sànchez, the candidate proposed by Carles Puigdemont after temporarily abandoning his bid to retake the presidency from Brussels while avoiding prosecution by Spanish courts.

According to CUP, the problem was not Sànchez himself, but the political agreement behind his candidacy. Carles Riera, the party leader, dismissed it as “autonomist”—in reference to the current political status of Catalonia as per the Spanish Constitution, an autonomous community of Spain.