Catalonia’s Parliament Delays Vote on Puigdemont as President

MADRID — The Catalan Parliament postponed a vote Tuesday to re-elect Carles Puigdemont, the leader of the movement to break away from Spain, as president of the restive region, extending a standoff with Madrid that could force new elections.

Roger Torrent, speaker of the Parliament, insisted that Puigdemont was the only candidate that separatist lawmakers would present, though Puigdemont refuses to return from Belgium, where he surfaced in late October to avoid prosecution in Spain for sedition and rebellion.

The postponement came after Spain’s Constitutional Court ruled Saturday that Puigdemont could not be elected and sworn in without physically being present in the Catalan assembly. The court also warned Torrent and other senior members of the regional Parliament that they could face criminal charges if they allowed a vote in absentia — possibly using a video link to Belgium — as Puigdemont had requested.

Catalonia, in northeastern Spain, held a referendum on independence Oct. 1, despite a Constitutional Court ruling that it was invalid, and attempts by Spain’s central government to disrupt the vote; with anti-separatist voters largely boycotting the referendum, the proposition passed easily.

The Catalan Parliament declared independence Oct. 27, in violation of the Spanish Constitution. Mariano Rajoy, Spain’s prime minister, then dismissed Puigdemont as Catalan president, along with his Cabinet, and called a snap election for a new regional assembly.

That election took place last month, and separatist lawmakers retained their narrow majority, winning 70 of the 135 seats in the Catalan Parliament. But the coalition of three separatist parties has struggled to form a new government, with its main leaders either in prison or in self-imposed exile.

Puigdemont’s Together for Catalonia was the largest vote-getter among the separatist parties, though he campaigned from Belgium. Rajoy's Popular Party lost seats, finishing last among seven parties.

“I will fight to the last to defend the rights of Carles Puigdemont,” Torrent said Tuesday. The parliamentary vote for a regional president was postponed, he said, because there had been insufficient “guarantees” from the Spanish government to ensure Puigdemont’s re-election, but it was “under no circumstances canceled.”

Rajoy's government, with the help of Spain’s judiciary, has used every means possible to stop Catalan lawmakers from electing a fugitive politician. Early Tuesday, local media reported that police surveillance had been reinforced around the assembly in Barcelona to prevent Puigdemont from making a surreptitious, last-minute return.

In its decision Saturday, the Spanish Constitutional Court ruled that Puigdemont would need to appear before a Spanish judge to seek preliminary permission to attend a session of the Catalan Parliament.

Torrent said that within 10 days, the Catalan Parliament would appeal the ruling, which he called “a judicial bungle,” designed to defend the political interests of Rajoy's government. The next regional president of Catalonia, he said, would be “the one elected by the lawmakers of this chamber, not the one decided by a court or a minister 600 kilometers away” in Madrid.

Still, Puigdemont’s refusal to step aside because of his legal problems and allow another separatist candidate to lead the region is raising tensions among the already fragile coalition of pro-independence parties. Last weekend, Joan Tardà, a leading politician from the Esquerra Republicana party, told the newspaper La Vanguardia that his party backed Puigdemont, but that his re-election bid might have to be “sacrificed” if it risked endangering the formation of another separatist government.

“We cannot put at risk the great electoral victory” of Dec. 21, when separatists retained their majority, Tardà said.

The political deadlock in Catalonia for now leaves the region under the direct control of Rajoy, using the same emergency constitutional powers that he invoked in October. When he called the snap election, Rajoy pledged to return Catalonia quickly to “normality,” as well as to end the secessionist threat, but he warned this month that he would extend direct rule over Catalonia to prevent Puigdemont from returning to power.

Under the rules of the Catalan Parliament, new elections are called if a presidential candidate fails to win a parliamentary majority and no alternative candidate emerges in the following two months. Under such a scenario, the Parliament would then be dissolved and new elections convened between 40 and 60 days later.