President Quim Torra travels to the US this weekend to speak at the Martin Luther King Institute on Monday, visit Stanford University and take part in a business delegation, along with business minister Àngels Chacón.

The founder and head of the Martin Luther King Institute, Clayborne Carson, has invited Torra to give a joint class at Stanford University on Monday evening –Catalan time- after which the president will give a talk at the Martin Luther King Jr. Research and Education Institute.

The president’s trip comes four months after Carson complained that his comments on the Catalan conflict had been “distorted” in the Spanish press. At the time, Carson described himself as “disturbed” at being misquoted in an interview with an online newspaper.

Visit to Silicon Valley

However, Torra’s official visit will not only address political and academic issues, but also business, and the president and Chacón will attend a dinner in San Francisco on Sunday evening –early hours of Monday Catalan time- with executives of Catalan and US firms.

On Tuesday, too, business will be top of the president’s agenda, with an outing to Silicon Valley to visit different tech companies, as well as for a meeting with executives from firms in the videogame sector.

ERC party leadership in Geneva

Meanwhile, the leadership of the pro-independence Esquerra Republicana party (ERC) held an executive meeting in Geneva on Friday, which was attended by the party’s secretary general, Marta Rovira, who is in exile in Switzerland.

With the trial of political leaders charged with rebellion for organising the 2017 independence bid due to begin, which includes the party’s head, former vice president Oriol Junqueras, ERC condemned repression of the independence movement by the Spanish authorities.

According to Rovira, the independence trial is “a trial against the referendum, a trial against October 1, a trial against democracy, a trial that attempts to put limits on democracy.”