The pro-independence majority in the Catalan Parliament has serious reasons to be very worried. The 70 deputies from 21st December are today, in the best of cases, 65, since there are five votes which don't count by decision of the Parliament's Board: Puigdemont, Sànchez, Rull, Turull and Comín. Junts per Catalunya (JxCat), Esquerra (ERC) and CUP cannot get any parliamentary initiative off the ground by themselves whilst this situation lasts, as has been seen this Tuesday with the loss of eleven votes on bills that they would have won in other circumstances. Judge Pablo Llarena has dismembered the results of the 21st December by imposing a series of legal decisions and, as such, the Supreme Court has become the lord and master of the Catalan chamber thanks to legal action based on arbitrary premises and impossible justification, but which has allowed it to accuse the Catalan political prisoners of rebellion, sedition and misuse of public funds.
July's differences between JxCat and ERC, which turned into a deeper political disagreement after summer, ended up being a strident rupture in September between the two parties, both clinging closely to unalterable, unimprovised scripts which have recently become an exclusively personal, not political question for some.
If politics is the world of criticisms, at the moment that's the only thing you hear in the pro-independence majority (now a minority). It's very likely that the plasters they've fictitiously put on to avoid the crisis reaching the government will prove effective. President Quim Torra and vice-president Aragonès, however hard they try, will find it tricky to look the other way, since the loss of trust between the two parties will inevitably end up affecting them. Has the legislature driven itself into a cul-de-sac? Will the government break the way the Parliament has? Will an election be inevitable? They are three questions which weren't on the table just hours ago and yet now, after what's happened in the Parliament, it's unavoidable to ask them. Even the third is impossible today to answer with 100% certainty.
Esquerra contends that, with their decision, Junqueras and Romeva have been able to vote this Tuesday without being suspended or substituted and with their rights guaranteed in the future, a very different case to the four Junts per Catalunya deputies in prison or exile, who haven't been able to vote and who won't be able to vote unless they modify their current situation. We haven't yet seen the final chapter of this battle, no longer played out in secret, but which has come out onto the field. The letter from Puigdemont, Sànchez, Turull and Rull in which they stand by their position gives a glimpse of this. As does Junqueras' response, from Lledoners prison, criticising them for not preserving the pro-independence majority by taking the step that he had already taken himself.
Division, division and division. The opposition parties must be rubbing their hands in glee.