Spain wants to claim criminal liability against Parliament’s President

Spain’s executive wants the Spanish Constitutional Court (TC) to apply an enforced sentence against the Parliament’s President, Carme Forcadell, for having disobeyed the TC’s rulings and allowing the pro-independence roadmap to be put to vote on Wednesday. In particular, the Spanish executive calls for the TC to ‘proceed to consider the witness of particulars in order to claim criminal liability against the Parliament’s President for disobeying the rulings of the TC, which all public servants are compelled to obey’. The current Spanish Cabinet, which met this Friday, also agreed to attempt to expressly ban the Parliament’s President, the Parliament Bureau and the Catalan President, Carles Puigdemont, from promoting any initiative in relation to the pro-independence process.

For her part, Forcadell assured that she is ‘not afraid’ of the TC and insisted that she ‘acted according to the rules’ and that she ‘couldn’t’ impede’ the vote on the conclusions of the Committee for the Constitutive Process from taking place. The Parliament’s President lamented the attempts of the Spanish executive to ‘limit political debate’ and ‘restrict the freedom of speech of the Parliament and its MPs’.