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News > Spain

Spain's Supreme Forces Catalonia's President To Leave Office

  • The banner reads,

    The banner reads, "Freedom of expression is not a crime." President you are not alone," Barcelona, Spain, Sept. 28, 2020. | Photo: EFE

Published 28 September 2020
Opinion

The regional parliament will be able to elect a new Executive branch's president and, if necessary, new elections would be called.

Spain’s Supreme Court disqualified the Catalonia president Quim Torra from his post for 18 months. The verdict argues that he did not comply with an Electoral Board's order, which requested him to remove banners supporting Catalan political prisoners.

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Torra must also pay a fine of 30,000 euros for his "forceful, repeated, and stubborn resistance" to obeying an order "invested with authority and dictated under the law."

Once the sentence for the crime of disobedience was published, Catalonia's Superior Court of Justice (TSJC) requested that Vice President Pere Aragones replace Torra immediately.

During the 2018 elections, Torra displayed a banner at the Government of Catalonia's headquarters in favor of those political leaders who were jailed for participating in the 2017 pro-independence referendum.

The Spanish authorities ordered the Catalan president to remove those banners. However, claiming that these orders were illegal and went against his freedom of expression, Torra did not remove the symbols of support for political prisoners.

Although the Spanish judges recognized that the Catalan politician can express his political identity as a citizen, they also holds that the sentence took into consideration his decision to disobey orders from electoral authorities whose function would be to demand "neutrality" from officials.

Until now, the Catalan Government had comprised a coalition between the pro-independence parties "Together for Catalonia" (JxCat) and the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC).

With the departure of Torra from his post, however, the regional parliament will be able to elect a new Executive branch's president and, if necessary, new elections would be called. This possibility has already been requested by the Socialist Party and the Popular Party.

Regarding the sentence that forces him to leave the government, Torra said that he will go to international courts to demand justice.

"The irregularities committed to overthrowing a new President will be judged in Europe, which is the only place where Catalan pro-independence activists, as well as the just and legitimate general cause against independentism, can find justice," he tweeted.

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