A recent ruling by the Constitutional Court has once again highlighted a legal issue in our legal system: do the presiding boards of Parliaments have an obligation to carry out a substantive review, in general, of the unconstitutionality of the motions for resolutions presented by different parliamentary groups? Indeed, the First Chamber of the Constitutional Court, in a ruling of February 23 of this year, annulled the agreements to admit for processing by the Bureau of the Parliament of Catalonia of some draft resolutions presented on the occasion of the debate on the general political orientation of the Government in September 2022. Some sections of these initiatives recognize the legality and legitimacy of the referendum of October 1, 2017, which could be interpreted as involving recognition of the eventual existence of possible legal effects, which could be subject to constitutional review. However, other sections were limited to expressing mere political objectives, such as those that urged the Government to develop its own competences, in order to reduce economic and political dependence on the Spanish state, for the purpose of preparing the exercise of the right to self-determination; those that urged strengthening the economic, fiscal, and financial sovereignty of the Generalitat; those that proposed laying the foundations for a constituent process; those relating to the objective of internationalizing the national reality of Catalonia, and those that referred to the advisability of acting with sovereignty, beyond constitutional and statutory limits, in guaranteeing the basic social rights of the majority of the population in different sectors. In all these latter cases, only a mere political declaration is expressed that could hardly be interpreted as involving any legal effect, in the sense of its impact on the creation, modification, or repeal of legal norms. It is not superfluous to recall that the bureaus of the Parliaments are bodies for directing parliamentary work. Thus, the bureau of the Parliament, as a collegiate governing body of the Parliament and made up of the president, two vice-presidencies, and four secretariats, exercises parliamentary functions, budgetary functions, and functions relating to the organization of the chamber's administration. The exercise of the bureau's parliamentary functions focuses on the qualification, admission for processing, and decision on the processing of parliamentary documents and writings.

Catalonia's High Court has failed to find available magistrates to hear the case against the members of the previos Parliamentary Bureau next 5, 6 and 7 October, after it upheld the recusals against Carlos Ramos and Jesús María Barrientos over doubts about their impartiality. In a resolution to which the ARA has had access, of which the exmembres of the bureau were notified this Thursday, admits that right now it has not found any magistrate "available" in the list of volunteers. For now, however, it has not postponed scheduled hearings for former speaker Roger Torrent, former deputy speaker Josep Costa and former secretaries Eusebi Campdepadrós and Adriana Delgado.

Script twist, at least temporarily, in the case against the previous Parliamentary Bureau for having allowed a debate and a vote on resolutions in favour of the independence referendum and against the monarchy. Catalonia's High Court has accepted the recusal of the court's president, Jesús María Barrientos, which was demanded by former deputy Speaker Josep Costa. This means that the court will remove Barrientos from the case and, automatically, will postpone the trial –initially scheduled for July 12, 13 and 15– so that Barrientos can be replaced by another magistrate. The High Court admits the recusal because it accepts that Barrientos's leaving a conference in which the situation of "political prisoners" was denounced was not neutral, "but a public and forceful show of disagreement with the person". It was on February 23, 2018 at the Col·legi d'Advocats and giving the conference was then Speaker Roger Torrent, who has been indicted in this case.

The start of the negotiations after Easter is slower than expected. On the first working day after Easter, Tuesday, there was no formal meeting between the ERC and Junts negotiators, and this Wednesday afternoon there has only been one meeting, which lasted little more than two hours. According to sources familiar with the talks, they have discussed the government programme, but have not yet talked about the structure the executive should have and the distribution of cabinet posts.

The leader of list of the CUP in the Parliament, Dolors Sabater, has assured today in Tv3 that the republicans have accepted that foam bullets are no longer used, that riot police does not participate in evictions and that the Generalitat withdraws the accusations against pro-independence protesters, in spite of the fact that after the parties met on Friday they simply said they would work on these issues.

CUP is not bluffing. They want to take advantage of the good hand dealt to them by the nine MPs they obtained in the elections and which have made them decisive for the investment of a new president. It has become known to ARA that CUP's demand to be in charge of the second most important institution in Catalonia is more important than entering the executive, and is a condition sine qua non to invest ERC's candidate, Pere Aragonès. In fact, the CUP has already suggested two names to command the institution: Dolors Sabater and Carles Riera.