<![CDATA[Ara in English - PDECat]]> 10 <![CDATA[Barcelona Court of Appeal rules out prosecuting PDECat and JxCat for €6.6m plundered from Palau de la Música]]>

The €6.6m that Fèlix Millet and Jordi Montull diverted from the Palau de la Música to Convergència (CDC) will not be returned to the institution and will be part of the sum of assets to be distributed among the political party's creditors, which continues its liquidation process in a commercial court of Barcelona. Before the beginning of this contest, Barcelona's High Court found the party guilty of illegally financing itself through commissions from construction company Ferrovial, which were disguised as donations to the Palau. The court ordered that this money be returned to the cultural institution and opened proceedings to determine whether PDECat or JxCat could be considered heirs of defunct parties and the conviction. Now the court has paralysed this procedure, a decision that implies stopping pursuing the two parties over the sentence of the Palau case.

]]> <![CDATA[Who benefits from new elections?]]>

When the pro-independence movement surpassed 50% of the votes and obtained a comfortable absolute majority, few believed that unblocking the investiture would be so complicated. But the misgivings between JxCat and ERC came from long before 14-F and they have not managed to overcome them with ten days to go before the deadline for repeat elections. Elections that would lengthen the interim situation and would show the failure of politicians, but also represent an opportunity for the parties.

]]> <![CDATA[14-F gives Aragonès the presidency despite PSC victory]]> The PSC has won the elections to the Catalan Parliament with more than 625,000 votes, but has tied at 33 seats with ERC, which collects more than 580,000 votes. The socialists' result is well above the 17 seats they had in 2017. The Salvador Illa operation has worked and has capitalised on the non-independence vote under the PSC umbrella, because the socialists have recovered 16 seats, especially in the metropolitan area, cities where Ciudadanos had won in the last elections. The latter, who were victorious in the 2017 elections, are shrunken on the map: they get only 6 seats, 30 less than in 2017. The setback is unprecedented: Cs has gone from first to seventh force in the hemicycle.

]]> <![CDATA[All pro-independence candidates pledge in writing not to govern with the PSC]]>

JxCat, ERC, CUP and PDECat have committed in writing this Wednesday not to govern with the Catalan Socialist party (PSC) after the elections. The text that they have validated does not leave room for interpretation: "Whatever the correlation of forces arising from the polls, in no case will the formation of government be agreed with the PSC," the document states.

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