There is now a candidate to be invested as Catalan president, Carles Puigdemont, but no date for the debate and vote. That was the announcement this Monday morning from the brand new Parliament speaker, Roger Torrent, who on Thursday and Friday last week met with representatives of all the political parties in the new legislature. The candidate who gathered the most support was Puigdemont, from Junts per Catalunya, with the open question about how such an investiture would take place. Torrent said Puigdemont has "complete legitimacy" to be a candidate.
Torrent has also sent a letter to Mariano Rajoy, the Spanish prime minister, asking for a meeting to "explore all the possible paths" to resolve the situation of the elected deputies who cannot physically attend the Parliament, starting with Puigdemont.
Recalling his speech at the opening of Parliament, Torrent framed his letter to Rajoy in calls for dialogue and situation politics at the centre of the debate. He wants to sit down with the Spanish prime minister to "analyse the anomalous situation the Parliament is experiencing". Similarly, the speaker has said that he will meet with the three deputies in preventive detention without bail (Oriol Junqueras, Joaquim Forn and Jordi Sànchez) and the five in Brussels, including Puigdemont, "as soon as possible".
"I will speak with everyone and mediate with whomever necessary", promised Torrent, who left pending the decision on the date for the investiture debate for these attempts at dialogue. "I will exercise my responsibilities, being aware of my obligation to defend the institution from interference and the situation from being paralysed," added the speaker.
Torrent explained that he has proposed Puigdemont for investiture as the only candidate put forward and who can gather the votes to form a government. At the same time, he is aware of his "personal and legal situation" and the "warning which looms over him". Nonetheless, he argued that Puigdemont has "absolute legitimacy" to be a candidate to the presidency.
"My duty is to do everything in my power for all deputies to be able to express themselves," he said. "It's a political question and, as I said in my speech [accepting the speakership], politics has to be at the centre of the debate."