With little over 48 hours to go until the debate in the Parliament to invest Carles Puigdemont as president, called last week by the Parliament's speaker, Roger Torrent, it's still unknown what the outcome will be or the position of the chamber's presiding Board, now that Spain's Constitutional Court has warned the debate shouldn't be held without the candidate present. A court which, moreover, has banned a surprise appearance by the candidate without legal authorisation.
CUP's deputies have already said they'll be at the debate to invest Puigdemont, as have those from Junts per Catalunya. These are logical moves before a parliamentary debate momentous not just in the way any normal investiture is momentous, but because the Spanish government has managed to have the court act as a guardian in a political situation which has got out of their hands. For the court to come out in aid of the executive complicates the situation even further when it should be the exact opposite.
As a last resort the Constitutional Court has abandoned its role of guardian of the Constitution to intervene in roles which aren't its responsibility, affecting the rules of the Catalan chamber and the situations of its deputies. The role of the Parliament's Board before the debate on Tuesday goes, therefore between compliance with the Constitutional Court once this has twisted the law to the maximum and disobedience. With one added twist: the court is contributing to altering the result of the winning majority of the election on 21st December.
All of this will have to be sorted out in the hours remaining before the debate. From the beginning I've argued that investing Puigdemont as president would be the best option and the one which would respect the election result. The obstacles seen have been trying to make an investiture impossible via events of enormous seriousness, inconceivable in any other country near us. Can they give up just like that, therefore, in the current conditions of manifest humiliation, or is there only room to hold out? The 70 deputies of the pro-independence majority will have to answer this question very soon.