TENSIONS were high in Barcelona on Tuesday as regional Deputies gathered to vote for a new leader following December’s elections to the Catalan parliament.
There was only one candidate, former leader Carles Puigdemont, but he remains in exile in Belgium to where he fled after October’s illegal independence referendum. Puigdemont faces arrest and charges of alleged sedition and rebellion if he sets foot in Spain, and at the weekend the Constitutional Court ruled that he would have to be physically present at his investiture in Cataluña’s parliament in order to take up the position.
