The threat of blocking hangs over the XIV Catalan legislature due to the vetoes given by the various candidates. Salvador Illa (PSC) has clearly won, but his investiture is up in the air. A tripartite with ERC and Commons Sumar would be the simplest formula, but Pere Aragonès has already ruled it out. The Junts leader, Carles Puigdemont, refuses to facilitate a socialist government and is also running for one. Beyond the difficulties inherent in the result of the polls, the imminent calendar of the legislature is affected by two other factors that can condition the development of the process: the European elections and the definitive approval of the Amnesty law. The calendar that must lead to an investiture or, if there is none, to an electoral repeat depends on the day that the Parliament is constituted. The law establishes a term of 20 working days to constitute it from the celebration of the elections.
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Today the Senate, with an absolute majority of the PP, will veto the Amnesty law, exhausting the deadline it had to process the law.
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The electoral campaign for the elections to the European Parliament begins, marked by great polarization between Sánchez and Feijóo, who emerges as the favorite and who aims to turn the elections into a plebiscite on the former.
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If nothing goes wrong, Congress will lift, probably at the last plenary session of May, the Senate’s veto of the Amnesty law and the rule will be definitively approved and will enter into force with publication in the Official State Gazette. The judges will have two months to apply it and one of the consequences it will have is that the trial judge will have to lift the precautionary measures that weigh on Puigdemont, such as the arrest warrant.
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The result of the European elections will have a Spanish and a Catalan reading, and both combined could condition the decisions in terms of pacts taken by the different parties involved in the future governability of Catalonia.
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The XIV legislature will begin with the constitutive session which by law must be held within 20 working days from the holding of the elections. It is foreseeable that it will be June 10, a date that will mark the next ones in this calendar. In this session, the new president will be elected from the rest of the members of the Board, an election that, due to the agreements they involve, will give clues about the policy of pacts and the future of the new legislature.
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Within eight working days from the day after this session, the parliamentary groups will be constituted.
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Ten days after the constitution of the Parliament, the investiture debate of the President of the Generalitat must begin. This term would end on June 25 if the constitution is on June 10. Both Illa and Puigdemont are applying for this appointment, which the ex-president is expected to attend, which will mean the return to Spain more than six years after taking up residence in Belgium to escape from Spanish justice. The candidate needs an absolute majority of the Chamber (68 votes) to be elected. If he does not get this support in the first vote, he can submit to a second vote two days later, in which a simple majority would be enough, that is, more yes than no.
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If the candidate is not invested, the president of the Chamber must make another round of consultations with the groups and must propose a candidate again. If no candidate is elected two months after the first investiture vote, the Chamber is automatically dissolved and new elections are called within 47 days.
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October 13 is the most likely date for an electoral repeat if after the legally provided deadlines there is no viable investiture.
