Spanish elections and politics

[Former President tack50]

Very slim. The current distribution in Barcelona's town hall is (21 councillors for an overall majority):


En Comú 11
CiU 10
Cs 5
ERC 5
PSC 4
PP 3
CUP 3

However I seriously doubt that a CiU-Cs-PP-PSC no confidence vote would work. CiU is radically different to the 3 others on the independence stuff (which was part of the reason why PSC and Podemos broke up in Barcelona) and PSC wouldn't support such a right wing government.

I guess Colau will stay for now but each time she seems like she will have a tougher time being reelected. I wouldn't be surprised if she was defeated. And that's considering that Barcelona is one of the safest towns for Podemos and that their next rival on the left (ERC) has half their seats!

[Former President tack50]

Seeing as Iglesias is so unpopular, could he be ousted or persuaded to move on? Is Errejon still part of the party?

Errejón is still part of the party, but it seems he'll just run for regional president in Madrid and has been out of the spotlight for a while. In fact I think Iglesias has basically taken out anyone who could contest his leadership.

I think all 4 main party leaders (Rajoy, Sánchez, Iglesias, Rivera) will all make it to the next general election.

[Former President tack50]

Well, here's the latest poll. If someone cares it also has other questions (like whether Spain should be more or less centralized or what worries Spaniards the most) and some crosstabs (by age, party and a couple others). It's generally considered the most complete poll:

CIS poll

http://www.cis.es/cis/opencms/ES/NoticiasNovedades/InfoCIS/2018/Documentacion_3203.html

PP: 26.3%
PSOE: 23.1%
Cs: 20.7%
UP: 19.0%

ERC: 3.4%
PDECat: 2%
PNV: 1.2%
Bildu: 0.8%
CC: 0.2%
Others: 1.8%

Approval ratings for politicians (out of 10)

Mariano Rajoy: 2.87
Pedro Sánchez: 3.68
Albert Rivera: 4.01
Pablo Iglesias: 2.54
Alberto Garzón: 3.67

Íñigo Alli (UPN): 2.75
Joan Baldoví (Compromís): 3.94
Marian Beitialarrangoitia (Bildu): 3.05
Carles Campuzano (PDECat): 3.17
Yolanda Díaz (En Marea): 3.32
Xavier Domenezh (En Comú Podem): 3.53
Aitor Esteban (PNV): 3.50
Isidro Martinez Oblanca (Foro Asturias): 2.38
Ana Oramas (CC): 3.77
Pedro Quevedo (NCa): 3.23
Joan Tardà (ERC): 2.71

Approval ratings for the cabinet

Fátima Bañez (Employment): 2.9
Rafael Catalá (Justice): 2.81
Maria Dolores de Cospedal (Defense): 2.93
Alfonso Dastis (Foreign affairs): 2.71
Isabel García Tejerina (Agriculture): 3.27
Luis de Guindos (Economy): 2.98
Íñigo Méndez de Vigo (Education, Government speaker): 3.03
Cristobal Montoro (Treasury): 2.33
Dolors Monserrat (Healthcare): 2.87
Álvaro Nadal (Energy and Tourism): 2.62
Soraya Saenz de Santamaría (Deputy Prime Minister): 3.58
Íñigo de la Serna (Public Works): 3.00
Juan Ignacio Zoido (Interior): 2.90

[Former President tack50]

Podemos and Cs have been working on a new electoral reform deal by themselves. They are trying to limit themselves to reforms that don't require constitutional reforms so that they can pass it without PP, just by convincing PSOE.

Today Podemos presented their proposal, which has 4 basic points:

-Lowering the voting age to 16

-Introducing "zipper lists". As in lists must alternate between men and women. Iirc Podemos and PSOE already do this by themselves, they want to make it mandatory for everyone else

-Replacing the D'Hondt method by Sainte Lague.

-Removing the "begged vote" system for Spaniards abroad.

-A joint "mailing" for ballots. In Spain ballots for the main parties are sent to your home instead of you having to pick them up. This obviously benefits large parties and it will remain this way, this is more of a cost saving measure.

-Mandatory debates

Of these the only one that has a real effect is the 3rd measure. While D'Hondt per se is not what makes the Spanish system not fully proportional (that would be provincial constituencies) it still makes it better. For reference the 2016 results would have been:

PP: 122 (-15)
PSOE: 84 (-1)
Podemos: 77 (+6)
Cs: 44 (+12)
ERC: 9 (nc)
PDECat: 7 (-1)
PNV: 4 (-1)
Bildu: 2 (nc)
CC: 1 (nc)

As for the others, lowering the voting age to 16 will almost certainly fail. Mandatory debates will probably fail as well. The others will probably be successful.

In general this is an underwhelming reform but is better than nothing. Of course we now have to wait for Cs' counteroffer and whether PSOE will even support their efforts as well. I certainly hope so but it's far from guaranteed.

--X--

Also, Catalonia has been having trouble getting a regional president. Puigdemont can't return to Spain and courts have determined that in order to be elected regional president he has to be in parliament. Secessionists wanted to elect him anyways but in the end the parliament speaker Roger Torrent (who had the power to call or not the parliamentary meeting) chickened out at the last minute and cancelled the meeting

So now ERC, JxCat and CUP are negotiating. Puigdemont apparently doesn't want to become irrelevant like Mas before him which is causing trouble.

The most common solution I've seen proposed is the "dual presidency" where there would be a symbolic president and a real one. ERC wants the legislature to behave normally and Puigdemont to be symbolic (think of the Spanish king). Puigdemont wants to be the real president, with a real parliament to elect him (he proposed the "mayors meeting", ie a meeting of all secessionists mayors) and the institutions in Barcelona being just puppets.

Unionist parties aren't happy and I guess they would sue but IMO a dual presidency would be legal. It wouldn't be that different from Kazcynski in Poland or Dragnea in Romania.

[Former President tack50]

Well, I guess El País is starting to do its polls on their offices. Either that or they are outright making them up.

Metroscopia-El País poll

https://politica.elpais.com/politica/2018/02/08/actualidad/1518116526_354844.html



With a handy seat extrapolator I found on the internet, the results would be:

Cs: 108
PP: 83
PSOE: 80
UP 53

ERC: 10
PDECat: 7
PNV: 6
Bildu 2
CC: 1

Cs-PP and Cs-PSOE both get a majority. In terms of regional winners:

PP: Galicia, Navarra, Ceuta, Melilla
PSOE: Andalucia, Extremadura
PNV: Basque Country
Unsure: Castille-Leon, Castille-La Mancha. The former probably leans Cs, the latter leans PP.
Cs: Everything else

[Former President tack50]

With a handy seat extrapolator I found on the internet, the results would be:

Cs: 108
PP: 83
PSOE: 80
UP 53

ERC: 10
PDECat: 7
PNV: 6
Bildu 2
CC: 1

Where can this extrapolator be found?

http://electomania.es/electocalculadora-3-0-%C2%A1ahora-con-mapa-integrado/

Here it is. It's an Excel spreadsheet where you put the percentages for each party and it extrapolates the Congress, Senate and even does a map.

The only downside is that it seems to be based off the 2015 election, not the 2016 one. Though it at least does add up IU and Podemos as UP.

[Former President tack50]

Another poll, this time from Gad3-ABC. Seems like the situation has stabilized.

[Former President tack50]

Apparently that poll also had a 2nd part, this time about the 2019 local elections. They polled the 52 provincial capitals and claim that PP+Cs would be able to get up to 35 of them. There are no date on the rest for some reason. The map looks like this



PP hold: Santander, Leon, Palencia, Burgos, Logroño, Guadalajara, Cuenca, Albacete, Cáceres, Badajoz, Jaén, Granada, Málaga, Almería, Ceuta, Melilla, Murcia

Cs gain from PP: Ávila

PP gain from PSOE: Oviedo, Huesca, Valladolid, Castellón, Ciudad Real, Córdoba

PP gain from nationalists: Palma de Mallorca (Technically PSOE held the mayor for 2 years and Mes for the other 2 as part of their deal, it was a tie)

PP gain from IU/Podemos: Zamora, Madrid, Cádiz

Cs gain from nationalists: Valencia (Compromís)

Cs gain from PSOE: Alicante

PSOE hold (but PP-Cs would have more councillors): Toledo, Sevilla

Overall number of councillors:



Since they didn't cover cities where PP+Cs wouldn't get a majority, I'll try to do them but these are just guesses:

A Coruña: Safe Podemos hold
Pontevedra: Safe BNG hold
Ourense: Likely Podemos hold
Lugo: Safe PSOE hold

IMO Ourense could change hands inside the block (to PSOE) and Lugo is the likeliest PP-Cs pickup. The other 2 are safe

Bilbao: Safe PNV hold (literally held by PNV since Spain became a democracy)
San Sebastián: Lean PNV hold
Vitoria: Lean PP gain

Keep in mind that while Bilbao is titanium PNV, the other 2 are very hard to predict because of post electoral deals.

Lleida: Tossup between PDECat and PSC
Girona: Safe PDECat hold
Tarragona: Lean PSOE hold
Barcelona: Lean Podemos hold

Again, other than Girona (and to a lesser extent Barcelona) the others are very hard to predict because of post electoral alliances. It will depend on how much the nationalist axis influences the standard left-right axis

Pamplona: Lean UPN gain
Soria: Safe PSOE hold
Segovia: Safe PSOE hold
Huelva: Safe PSOE hold

Again, Pamplona is a bit hard to predict, the other 3 are extremely safe for PSOE (in Huelva's case only if PP-Cs don't get a majority). They even got an overall majority in Soria and Segovia in 2015!

Las Palmas de Gran Canaria: Lean PP gain.
Santa Cruz de Tenerife: Likely CC hold

Santa Cruz will probably stay with CC, probably through CC-PP. In Las Palmas PP-Cs doesn't get a majority but they could probably count on UxGC, a PP split. Or in CC if it somehow gets representation but that seems very unlikely.

[Former President tack50]

There could be PSOE-Cs alliances. Particularly in places where PSOE is the largest party but not just limited to those. It would depend more on local issues I guess.

And yes, Podemos doesn't technically exist at the local level but let's be honest, most people who vote for one of those independent lists probably knows they are voting for Podemos. But yes, they can get very complicated.

Not sure if they'll do that again. I guess it will depend on the local specifics, their relation with the local IU branch, etc.

[Former President tack50]

Tack, could you discuss a little bit about Cs's platform and placement on the political spectrum, if you don't mind?

I thought everyone already knew about them. But sure, no problem.

Economically they are quite pro-free market. So they support lower taxes, entrepeneurs, more flexible labour laws and the like. One of their key proposals for the last elections was a single contract type, to replace the current dual system of temporary and indefinite contracts.

In terms of social stuff they are centrist I think. They support legalizing surrogate motherhood. Originally they had 2 quite conservative proposals: keeping the law that makes illegal inmigrants only able to get emergancy healthcare and ammending the 2004 gender violence law which according to them unfairly criminalizes men. They've gone back on the 2nd and I think also on the first but I'm not sure on that one.

In general they are seen as more liberal than PP though and have none of the ties to the Catholic Church that PP has (at least nominally)

As for other stuff they are quite tough on corruption and want a stronger central government. They want to abolish the Senate and the provincial governments.

And of course they are quite hardline on the Catalan issue, opposing any deals with the nationalists. They also oppose the special Basque financing system. This is expected since they originally were born as an explicitly anti Catalan nationalist party.

In general they are your standard European centrist liberal party. I've often seen Rivera compared to Macron.

[Former President tack50]

2 more new polls

Celeste-Tel for Eldiario.es

PP: 118-123 (28.9%)
PSOE: 92-95 (25.5%)
Cs: 61-63 (19.3%)
UP: 47-52 (16.5%)
PACMA: 0 (1.2%)
Others: 1.6%

ERC: 10-11 (2.7%)
PDECat: 6 (1.6%)
PNV: 5-6 (1.3%)
Bildu: 2-3 (0.9%)
CC: 1 (0.3%)

Also includes vote by age and vote transfers

http://www.eldiario.es/politica/Encuesta-electoral-Celeste-Tel-noviembre_0_739826392.html

Invymark for La Sexta

PP: 25.9%
Cs: 23.8%
PSOE: 22.8%
UP: 16.5%

Approval ratings

Albert Rivera: 4.52
Pedro Sánchez: 4.32
Mariano Rajoy: 3.23
Pablo Iglesias: 2.64

Seat distribution (assuming an even swing)



http://www.lasexta.com/noticias/nacional/ciudadanos-se-consolida-como-la-segunda-fuerza-politica-en-intencion-de-voto-a-solo-dos-puntos-del-pp_201802185a89804c0cf2af57a90682bd.html

[Former President tack50]

For some reason we just got 3 polls for the next Andalusian regional election during last week. Tomorrow is Andalucía's national day so I guess that's the reason why.

In theory the election isn't due until March 2019 (shortly before the EU, regional and local elections in May). However many expect Susana Diaz to call a snap election though she denies this.

Anyways, here are the 3 polls:

EGOPA (basically the "Andalusian CIS". Done by the University of Granada)



Approval ratings

Susana Diaz (PSOE): 4.38/10 (known by 91%)
Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla (PP): 4.14/10 (known by 58%)
Teresa Rodriguez (Podemos): 4.18/10 (known by 59%)
Juan Marín (Cs): 4.76/10 (known by 42%)
Antonio Maíllo (IU): 4.49/10 (known by 56%)

http://cadpea.ugr.es/v4/documentos/file/EGOPA%20INVIERNO%202018/Informe%20EGOPA%20INV%C2%B42018%20copia.pdf

NC Report (seats only) 109 seats, 55 for a majority

PP: 33 (-)
Cs: 14 (+5)
PSOE: 43 (-4)
Podemos: 14 (-1)
IU: 5 (-)

http://www.lavanguardia.com/local/sevilla/20180226/441100728558/psoe-a-ganaria-con-8-puntos-sobre-el-pp-a-que-repetiria-escanos-y-cs-lograria-cinco-mas-segun-un-sondeo-de-el-mundo.html

SW Información

PP: 22.5% (25 seats)
Cs: 19.5% (23 seats)
PSOE: 35.4% (45 seats)
UP: 16.5% (16 seats)

http://electomania.es/andalucia-el-psoe-ganaria-de-nuevo-ciudadanos-cerca-del-sorpasso-al-pp/

For reference, the 2015 results were:

PSOE: 35.3% (47 seats)
PP: 26.7% (33 seats)
Podemos: 14.8% (15 seats)
Cs: 9.2% (9 seats)
IU: 6.9% (5 seats)

UPyD: 1.9% (0 seats)
Andalusian Party: 1.7% (0 seats)

Not sure if UPyD will contest the election, though it will be basically in zombie form if it does. The Andalusian Party dissolved shortly after the election. Maybe there will be some successor but I don't think it will even get 1%.

[Former President tack50]

Is a Unidos/PSOE coalition likely? Or will Diaz look to the C's first?

Not really. Podemos hates PSOE-A with a passion. Diaz will only go with them as a last resort probably.

In fact, if PP-Cs is short of a majority it wouldn't be completely impossible for Podemos to abstain and allow them to form a minority government, particularly if Cs is ahead.

This has already happened with IU in the past, see Asturias 1995 and Extremadura 2011. Though IU did go with PSOE in 2012 so who knows? Probably likelier to see PSOE-Podemos in that scenario.

Then again Cs' rise basically makes that scenario impossible. It would require PSOE not coming in first, PSOE-Cs not being enough and Podemos abstaining.

[Former President tack50]

Ok, here are the last few national polls:

NC Report for La Razón



Invymark for La Sexta



I think things have stabilized a bit? Cs and PSOE seem tied while PP is narrowly ahead. An interesting sideffect of this results could be Cs beating PSOE on the popular vote but getting less seats. It's something that has never happened in Spain but that is theoretically possible (if unlikely)

[Former President tack50]

And PP comes in third in a poll!  Not sure if it's the first or not



However the most interesting thing is PACMA. They come at 2%, compared to 1.2% in 2016.

That means that PACMA might get a seat or even 2! They need 3% in Madrid or Barcelona to get seats. In 2016 they got 1.2% in the former and 1.8% in the latter. So at 2% they probably get the Barcelona seat

[Former President tack50]

It's possible, but I would not count on it. In fact every effort by Rajoy seems to be going in the opposite direction, trying to hold until the 2019 regional/local/EU elections and see if PP gets a decent result there or not.

The opposition is claiming that we currently have a "do nothing Congress". Rajoy has promised that he will finally bring a budget to parliament on the 23rd of March. He still doesn't have any support though.

I guess the Canarian parties (particularly CC) won't offer much resistance. But Cs might try and vote against it to capitalize on its good polling numbers though that's a risky strategy. I think Cs will pass it though.

However PNV has said that they won't support any budget until article 155 is lifted on Catalonia which is a whole other story of its own.

On the Catalan side after the whole Puigdemont fiasco he has finally accepted that he won't become regional president. Now the nominee is Jordi Sánchez, number 2 in PDECat's list, former head of a  pro-independence association and most importantly, currently on jail.

However he might not even get the votes to begin with. ERC is definitely not happy about that. They claim that if there is going to be a president from jail and that the number 2 choice for a seccessionist, should be Oriol Junqueras (Puigdemont's VP). However PDECat claims that the president should come from the largest party (ie PDECat)

And CUP has already announced that they won't support Sánchez. In theory this shouldn't be an issue since ERC+JxCat have 66 seats compared to unionists+Podemos' 65, so just an abstention (or being absent) would be enough. Howeveer Puigdemont and one of his former regional ministers are in Brussels and they can't vote so the total score would be 64-65 in favour of unionists so Sánchez would be rejected.

In other words the Catalan issue won't be solved any time soon. Though at least a failed Sánchez vote would make the clock tick towards a second regional election. The Puigdemont failed investiture (where there was a mini "constitutional crisis" with conflicting laws) ended with everyone basically agreeing that the clock hasn't started to count down yet.

And as for a no confidence vote the opposition is too divided so it doesn't seem like they will all join in a no confidence vote. Which means Rajoy could easily stay until 2020 and just rule by decree (though any decrees can be rejected by Congress, in fact the first rejection of a government decree in Spanish history already happened in this term).

[Former President tack50]

On a sidenote, Jordi Sánchez has not been allowed to temporarily leave jail to attend his investiture vote in Catalonia. The Catalan parliament president has suspended the vote again.

In other words, Catalonia won't be getting a government any time soon.

[Former President tack50]

how are all the corruption cases going? I remember before Catalonia eupted as an issue, it very much looked like Rajoy himself would get caught up?

Well Rajoy still lead the PP by next election?

Well, the trickle of corrupt PP politicians has continued for the last few months or so. The hottest case right now seems to be a continuation of the Gürtel case, involving the Valencian PP, but there have been others.

And yes, Rajoy will still lead PP by the next election. He says that he wants to continue and an internal revolt seems impossible (if it wasn't done in 2008, it won't happen now).

I guess Cs could try to pass term limits but I don't think that will go anywhere.

[Former President tack50]

To be fair, the actual strike was very underwhelming. Just compare the electricity consumption data to that of the last general strike (14th November 2012). Though it also doesn't help that only small unions were supporting the 24h strikes, with the major unions (CCOO and UGT) only backing 2h strikes

https://demanda.ree.es/demanda.html

What was a success were the protests in the same day, which was a surprise to me. I though they were going to fail hard.

I'm happy we've moved on from flags I guess but I don't quite agree with the feminists.

Though watching PP and Cs hilariously backflip hard was really nice.

PP went from people like Cifuentes and Tejerina saying they will do a "Japanese strike" (ie work harder), to Rajoy inmediately saying that he doesn't believe that. And Cs went from being against the strike because it was anticapitalist to fully supporting it (though in Cs' defense, one of the issues was that capitalism opressed women and their flip wasn't as hard as PP's)

[Former President tack50]

Well, iirc they were in favour of repealing the "gag law" at least nominally. However they hadn't really done anything about it until this February when they voted to pass a motion to start repealing it. Still not repealed though.

However as of now the big "liberal" debate is probably the repeal of "permanent revisable prision", a form of life imprisionment introduced in 2015 by PP.

This has come into the spotlight because of a few mediatic murder cases reciently. The positions are:

PP: They want to keep it as is, or even make it harsher

Cs: They've done a flip. Back when they made a deal with PSOE they agreed to repeal it as part of the deal (though it wasn't part of their platform in Cs defense). However now they have flipped to PP's position, where they want to keep it or even make it harsher. They do seem slightly more moderate than PP though

PSOE, Podemos and PNV are the main parties behind the effort to repeal the law, they all agree on repealing it.

Worth noting that back when it was passed all parties except PP sent the law to the constitutional court to see if it was constitutional. No news on that front though.

So I guess Cs is becoming less liberal and more of a PP-lite without corruption

[Former President tack50]

I mean, I just think they might be going too far? Not sure how to put it really. Many demands are reasonable, but some of my complaints might include:

The "wage gap" doesn't really exist. If you adjust for hours worked, position, etc; the wage gap basically disappears, it's just that women usually take less paid jobs, work less hours etc. Of course now you have to ask whether that's because of social pressure or what, but the "wage gap" in the "women earn less for the same job" sense  doesn't really exist.

In fact I think it will probably shrink naturally over the years as the generations educated under Franco (when women didn't really work and were discriminated if they did) retire and since women have a majority of degrees in university.

Other stuff I don't fully agree might include

Way too much focus on "oppression by the patriarchy". Though it might be me being subconsciously biased against those terms.

While not the focus of the strike, it involved anti-capitalist elements.

It was way too politicised. Looking at the manifesto, many parts might as well be part of Podemos' or PSOE's 2020 manifesto. Think of stuff like critizising cuts and corruption.

That and the fact that the stike was redundant in itself IMO. The 2h strikes by the major unions were much better. I do fully support the protests though.

Now, it doesn't mean that I disagree with all or even most of the manifesto (I'd probably agree 50-75%), I just think it went a bit too far?

I feel like while there's still stuff to do, women in Spain are really well off. Iirc Spain was the 5th best country to be a woman, only behind like the nordic countries. We are on the right track, inequality will probably solve itself over time. We just have to wait now, Rome wasn't built in a day after all.

[Former President tack50]

On a sidenote, the pensionists protests have been also very successful. They are also bringing pensions back to the debate.

For those unaware, the government has been rising pensions by 0.25% each year even though inflation is much higher than that. So in the end it equals to some sort of "hidden cut"

The thing is that the entire Spanish pension system is probably a Ponzi scheme in that young people (less) pay the pensions of old people (more). So the big problem here (as everywhere else) is sustainability.

Iirc Podemos and PSOE are pushing to tie pensions to inflation while the government is opposed to that.

[Former President tack50]

We have some new polls. And for the first time ever, Vox manages to get a seat in a regional assembly!

Celeste-Tel for eldiario.es



Simple Lógica





Approval ratings





And the poll you were all waiting for:

SyM Consulting for Murcia regional assembly



Yes, the "others" part is confirmed to be Vox

https://twitter.com/electo_mania/status/974371882031075328

That pollster has done quite a lot of regional polls actually over the last few months, but this one is by far the most interesting one, mostly because of the IU revival and Vox's rise

[Former President tack50]

2 more new polls

GAD3 for La Vanguardia



Not much interesting about this one other than Podemos finally recovering and Cs winning in votes but only getting a tie in terms of seats

Invymark for La Sexta



This one predicts a tie in terms of votes. However IMO the most interesting thing are the Catalan nationalists, with PDECat tying with ERC! It might be a fluke (after all there's probably a small sample size) but if they managed to beat ERC, it would be the first time ERC is the smaller Catalan nationalist in a Spain-wide election since the 2011 general election.

[Former President tack50]

We somehow got a lot of big news today!

First of all we have a big scandal from regional president of Madrid, Cristina Cifuentes (PP). She is being accused of falsifying her final Masters degree work and another course. The university and Cifuentes have denied this and released some documents but the ones who uncovered the scandal are releasing contradicting documents so who knows? Thus far she has not given a good explanation.

And this is a very big scandal for several reasons:

The regional election is in June of 2019, little more than a year from now. And PP will start choosing its candidates soon. So if she is found guilty of falsifying her degree she will have to be replaced. So far she is giving big vibes of corruption, another corruption case she also didn't really explain it well.

Her deal with Cs explicitly said that if someone from the government was found falsyfying their curriculum, they had to resign. Thus far Cs hasn't broken the alliance but if she isn't able to explain it well, they'll probably do that soon.




And the other big news, guess who? Everyone's favourite region, Catalonia!

The judge in charge of the case against the former regional government called a meeting for this friday, to see if he sent them back to prision, put them a bigger bail, did nothing, retired their passports, the usual stuff

To counteract this and just to be sure that they don't go to jail, the president of the catalan parliament, Roger Torrent, called for a special meeting of the Catalan parliament tomorrow, to make Jordi Turull (fmr. government speaker) the new regional Catalan president.

It's expected to pass since everyone thinks CUP won't dare to oppose him. So tomorrow we'll have a new Catalan president, out of nowhere.

However apparently because of procedural stuff there's a short while between getting a president-elect and the president-elect taking possession. So it's entirely possible that Turull is sent to jail as president-elect, which means that he is inmediately disqualified and thus article 155 isn't lifted.

Catalan politicians never cease to amaze me