Clash over eviction mars Catalan president’s first day in office

The new Catalan president, Pere Aragonès, had a taste of the challenge he faces in keeping his governing alliance together when a key parliamentary ally accused him of going back on his word just a day after taking office.

Mr Aragonès (38), of the Catalan Republican Left (ERC), was sworn in as regional president on Monday. His party leads a Catalan government for the first time in the modern era, as the senior partner in a coalition with the centre-right Together for Catalonia (JxCat).

Their pro-independence administration also requires the parliamentary support of the hard-left Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP).

On Tuesday, four CUP politicians took part in a protest against the eviction of a group of squatters from a flat in Barcelona. Riot police carried out the eviction, using truncheons as they charged at protesters, many of who threw paint and other objects at them.

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In the debate ahead of Mr Aragonès’s investiture, the CUP had demanded the withdrawal of the riot police from eviction procedures in exchange for its support.

“The security forces cannot be used to solve housing problems,” said Mireia Vehí, spokeswoman for the CUP. “This is not a new start, Mr Aragonès.”

A group of housing activists then occupied part of ERC’s headquarters in protest at the new government’s failure to stop the eviction or the riot police’s involvement in it.

Mr Aragonès said he will ask his new regional justice and interior ministers to “find a new way of working to avoid situations like the one caused this morning by a judicial order.”

Lengthy negotiations

The new government was formed more than three months after elections were held which the unionist Socialists won, closely followed by ERC and JxCat.

With the Socialists unable to form a majority, the two pro-independence parties embarked on lengthy negotiations before agreeing on a new coalition, which is a reversal of their often-rancourous partnership of the last legislation.

Much of their disagreement in the wake of the election centred on the strategy regarding independence.

ERC advocates negotiations with the leftist Spanish government of Pedro Sánchez in the hope of securing a binding referendum on secession.

JxCat, led by former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, who is in self-imposed exile in Belgium, is sceptical about the talks.

The Council of the Republic, a pro-independence entity led by Mr Puigdemont, on Monday called for the new Catalan government to “respond successfully to the confrontation to which the [Spanish] state will probably lead us”.

Meanwhile, prime minister Pedro Sánchez has said he will make a decision on whether to pardon nine Catalan leaders who were jailed for their role in a 2017 failed bid for independence based on “concord, dialogue and understanding”.

The supreme court is this week expected to issue its non-binding recommendation on whether pardons should be given.