Parliamentary sessions to swear in Torra set for Saturday and Monday

Parliament will meet on Saturday and Monday to swear in the JxCat party’s Quim Torra as the new Catalan president. Parliament speaker, Roger Torrent, set the dates for Torra’s investiture after consulting Catalonia’s political parties to confirm Torra as the presidential candidate on Friday morning.

Swearing in Torra will require two parliamentary sessions, as the voting is set to go to a second round. If the membership of CUP decide to maintain the party’s intention to abstain, Torra will not be able to get an absolute majority of votes in the first round. In that case, the voting would automatically go to a second round, in which a simple majority will be enough.

Torra was put forward as the presidential candidate by JxCat leader, Carles Puigdemont, after the courts blocked his own bid to retake office. After four previous attempts to swear in a president proved fruitless, the deadline of May 22 for the Parliament to appoint a head of government was looming, and with it the possibility of an automatic snap election.

Swearing in a new president has proved elusive since the pro-independence parties held on to their majority in the chamber in the December 21 election. All three candidates put forward so far -Puigdemont, Jordi Sànchez (twice) and Jordi Turull- have been blocked by Spanish courts, with the argument that they are in jail, being prosecuted or in exile.