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Saturday, 13 March 2021_The pro-independence majority in Catalonia's newly elected parliament has picked radical separatist Laura Borras for speaker, paving the way for the election of a new coalition government in two weeks.
The former culture minister, who is an ally of exiled ex-president Carles Puigdemont, set the tone for the upcoming legislature. Borras was stripped of her immunity as member of Spain's Congress last year after she was accused of misuse of public funds when she was in charge of the Institute of Catalan Letters.
Putting up a challenge to Borras separatists are members of the far right Vox, who made their way into Catalan politics for the first time in the 2021 vote.
They have vowed to break the seemingly united separatists. However, a majority of lawmakers agreed to erect a cordon sanitaire around the populist party which won 11 seats in the February election.
The leader of the far-right party in Catalonia vowed to fight back. The next stage for Catalan lawmakers is the election of a president for the region. Former vice-president Pere Aragonés from the Republican Left Party of Catalonia is the likely candidate.
He is a firm believer in the independence of Catalonia from Spain but unlike the speaker of parliament, he advocates a more moderate approach with the central government in Madrid. With a new speaker under investigation, and a spectacular breakthrough for the far-right, Catalonia’s parliament is off to a rocky start.
For now, the road ahead is clear for the pro-independence majority to form a government and get down to business, except this time, the man at the helm in the Generalitat will be holding out an olive branch in one hand, and the Estelada flag in the other.
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