The plenary session of the Parliament of Catalonia has elected this Friday the deputy of Junts per Catalunya Anna Erra as the new president of the institution, as planned, with the votes in favor of the JxCat group and the Esquerra Republicana, and with the blank vote of the CUP, which has opted for the same formula that it used in March 2021 when Laura Borràs was chosen as president. Thus, Erra, who has come out ahead in the second ballot, has added 64 favorable votes, more than the 44 of the socialist Assumpta Escarp, who is second vice president of the Table and was the candidate proposed by the PSC. In white there have been 25 votes.
In the first vote, which in this case is carried out in a ballot box and secretly, the post-convergent deputy (64) has already obtained more votes than her rivals, Escarp (33), Juan Carles Gallego from En Comú Podem (8), MatÃas Alonso (5) from Ciudadanos, MarÃa GarcÃa Fuster from Vox (10) and Lorena Roldán from the PP (3). In white there have been 10 votes. However, to be elected president in the first vote, an absolute majority is required, which is why a second round of voting has been necessary, in which only the two deputies with the most support can vote.
In her first speech as president, the post-convergent leader has promised to exercise a “full presidency, with rigor and all her powers”, she has announced that she will travel throughout Catalonia to listen to the needs of all citizens, emphasizing her origin from Vic , and has asked, citing the first speech of the deceased former president of the institution Miquel Coll Alentorn, from 1984, “tolerance and mutual respect” to all parliamentarians.
Likewise, he has assured that he will defend “the sovereignty of the Parliament above all else” and the right to “debate, speak and vote on everything that the groups agree on” and that he will also defend “the rights of all deputies”. “I will defend the institution from any external interference”, pointed out Erra, who has indicated that he will maintain the “democratic demand and defense of the political rights of the deputies” and the “modernization and transparency of the institution” that began, according to what he said , at the beginning of the legislature with Borrà s.
With the election of Erra, who is still acting mayor of Vic and has been vice president of Junts since the party was founded in 2020, an end to more than ten months of interim in the Catalan Chamber, which entered a limbo and an unprecedented situation at the end of July last year, when Borrà s was suspended as deputy and president, by virtue of the institution’s regulations, due to her judicial situation. All this time, the person who has carried out the functions of president has been the first vice president of the Chamber, the republican Alba Vergés, who has also led today’s debate.
In March, the president of JxCat was sentenced by the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) to four and a half years in prison and 13 years of disqualification for prevarication and document fraud for her time at the head of the Institució de les Lletres Catalanes and the Board Central Electoral, although the sentence is not final, withdrew the seat and issued the credentials of the next member of the post-convergent list, Toni Castellà .
This Friday’s plenary session was the first since the Parliament was reopened in which the presidency of the institution has been renewed in the middle of the legislature. All of Borrà s’s predecessors since 1980 had been elected in the constitutive session and had exhausted the legislature as the second authority in Catalonia.
Erra began to sound like a possible president of the Chamber a year ago and was the candidate who has advocated the pragmatic wing of the post-convergent space throughout this time. In fact, in July 2022, when Borràs was suspended, there were already party leaders who asked her to step aside and make way for a new institutional figure, but the sovereignist leader has remained in limbo all this time as the suspended president of the institution, without compensation, duties or rights.
The election of Erra, with the votes of the post-convergents and the Republicans, stages, at least symbolically, the independence agreement between the two great formations at a time when they are trying to recover battered confidence and rebuild a minimum consensus, as response to the significant abstention of sovereignism in the municipal elections of May 28. The president of the Generalitat himself, Pere Aragonès, said on Wednesday from Marseille that the arrival of Erra to the presidency of the Chamber allows “rebuilding trust” between independentistas.
In the boxes that the chamber reserves for the authorities in this atypical plenary session were the former president of the Generalitat Artur Mas, the former presidents of the Parliament Joan Rigol, Carme Forcadell and Laura Borrà s, as well as senior government officials, the general secretary of Junts, Jordi Turull, former councilor Meritxell Borrà s, the chancellor of the University of Vic, Josep-Eladi Baños, the union of Greuges, Esther Giménez Salinas and union representatives, among others. In addition, although the majority does not have a deputy’s record, in the front row were the government advisers. In the Executive Council, only the president, Aragonès, and the head of Territory, Juli Fernández, have deputy minutes.
