Jordi Sànchez, president of the Catalan National Assembly until he was sent to prison and current Junts per Catalunya deputy in the Catalan Parliament, is now officially the candidate for the presidency of Catalonia proposed by the Parliament's speaker, Roger Torrent. Sànchez's investiture debate has no date, on hold whilst Junts per Catalunya (JxCat) and Esquerra Republicana (ERC) agree on the government's agenda, the distribution of the ministries and the other loose ends of a complex negotiation process in which ERC has put its election result to use to get a 50-50 split between the parties. In any case, it's reasonable for Roger Torrent to announce the date for the debate before the end of this week.
CUP's announced abstention in the vote hasn't changed the script for the two pro-independence parties. Nor the fear that the theoretical 70 republican deputies in favour of Sànchez could drop to 64 after the four abstentions announced by CUP and the two votes lost with president Carles Puigdemont and minister Antoni Comín, exiled in Brussels due to the suspension of Catalan autonomy and the application of article 155 of the Spanish Constitution. These 64 votes would not be enough facing the 65 votes against that Ciutadans, PSC, Catalunya En Comú-Podem and the Partit Popular total. It's certainly a very varied cocktail mixing very different political stripes, but one ready to block the path to the presidency for Jordi Sànchez who this Monday has reached 140 days in Estremera prison.
If everyone sticks to the script, the hot potato that Jordi Sànchez's candidacy is for the state will shortly start its pilgrimage through at least two courts: the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court. One of the two, or both at once, will have to decide about the candidate leaving prison and about his candidacy. There are favourable precedents for both cases, as has been repeatedly mentioned, in the candidacy to the Basque Parliament of an ETA prisoner, Juan Carlos Yoldi, in 1987. But now it seems that the Spanish state wants to apply a standard which it didn't use against the ETA prisoner and that it's ready to make Sànchez unelectable, an idea which many jurists believe to fall outside the prevailing law and some, even, have gone as far as to consider an act of malfeasance.
In any case, it's worth taking into account two important elements at the heart of the debate: what Spanish justice decides now will end up one day in the European courts with the resulting consequences and, secondly, there's a strong will on the part of the state's highest courts that the decree nominating Jordi Sànchez should never arrive on the head of state's desk for signing and later publication in the Official State Gazette. This last factor will be key in the coming days.
Probably due to all of this, the topic of CUP's four votes isn't the most important issue and has been strategically moved to the second rank. If Sànchez's candidacy can set sail, that will be the time to reach an agreement for CUP's votes.