Unionist Cs party sues parliament speaker and other bureau members

The unionist Ciutadans party has sued the Catalan parliament speaker, Roger Torrent, for allowing a debate and vote on a motion calling for Catalonia's self-determination, which had been partly suspended by Spain's Constitutional Court.

The lawsuit, which also affects the other three pro-independence chamber bureau members, accuses them of being "perfectly aware of the clear illegality of their acts," after they had already been warned by the top Spanish judges.

A few weeks ago, the three pro-independence parties – JxCat, ERC and CUP – filed a motion in response to the Supreme Court's sentencing of jailed leaders. The text called for self-determination, for the release of the imprisoned politicians and activists, and a condemnation of the King of Spain.

After the bureau accepted the motion for consideration, the Constitutional Court suspended the parts of the proposal referring to self-determination and the monarchy, but not the rest of the motion.

The parliament bureau decided to allow lawmakers to debate and vote on the motion after MPs found a way to circumvent the block; they called the Constitutional Court's veto "censorship," and rejected it by quoting the blocked literal text.

Speaker dismisses lawsuit as "useless"

Torrent responded to Cs' latest lawsuit by dismissing the party's repeated legal challenges as "useless" and pledging to continue working to allow free parliamentary debates: "Trying to win in court what you didn't win in politics is useless. I'll continue to defend freedom of expression until the last consequences."