Parliament speaker “thinks he is Puigdemont’s lawyer,” says unionist Cs leader

The leader of the main unionist party in the chamber, Ciutadans, flatly opposed to the Parliament speaker's trip to Geneva this Wednesday. Inés Arrimadas said that Roger Torrent “thinks he is Puigdemont’s lawyer or emissary,” after he held a meeting with a high-ranking UN Human Rights Council official in the Swiss city. The chamber speaker is denouncing a “violation of fundamental rights” of Catalan MPs who have been barred from being sworn in by Spain’s judiciary.

Arrimadas accused Torrent of being willing to transform the Catalan Parliament into a “pro-independence law firm” and emphasized that, in her view, he is not acting as a Parliament speaker for everyone. “He has never had his role clear,” she added. Arrimadas went on to criticize the whole pro-independence movement. “Puigdemont will never be president again, there is no Catalan Republic, they have no social majority to do what they are doing and there is no legal framework for that,” she claimed.

On the other hand, Ciutadans is determined to avoid the Catalan chamber issuing a lawsuit against Spain’s Supreme Court judge in charge of the independence case for perversion of justice. Last week, the parliament bureau – controlled by the pro-independence majorit y– decided to make this move, but Inés Arrimadas announced on Wednesday that her parliamentary group will ask the bureau to reconsider this decision. For her, the lawsuit aims to “put pressure” on the judge in the Supreme Court.