Age-based leave was created in 2008 during Ernest Benach's presidency of the Catalan Parliament. There are several theories about what led the chamber to promote this unprecedented figure that allowed civil servants to collect virtually 100% of their salary without attending work in the five years previous to their retirement: some say it was created to accelerate some senior officials' departure; others, that it was a request by the staff council; there are even those who claim senior staff pulled strings to have a golden pre-retirement – Imma Folchi was then secretary general and is one of the beneficiaries of age-based leave. Be that as it may, what is certain is that the system was kept in place for 14 years and was not eliminated until ARA reported on January 17 that in 2021 Parliament allocated €1.7m to paying 21 officials who no longer worked there. This Friday, Speaker Laura Borràs explained that, in total, since 2009 the Catalan Parliament has paid €14.4m to people who no longer worked there.

Speaker Laura Borràs has appeared before the board of Spokespersons to give explanations about the Pau Juvillà saga, who was stripped of his seat at the behest of the Central Electoral Board (JEC). The Speaker begun her appearance asserting that Parliament is in an "extreme weakness" before the decisions of the JEC and that its "sovereignty" is questioned as a result of MPs being stripped of their seats. First, it was president of the Generalitat, Quim Torra, in 2020; more recently, it has been Pau Juvillà.

That Pau Juvillà no longer has a seat in Parliament is the only absolute truth of the first disqualification of an MP during the current Catalan legislature. In spite of the speeches, the promises, the appearances without questions and the votes in the plenary and in the Statute of the Deputies commission, the pro-independence movement has not managed to keep the seat before the interference of the Central Electoral Board (JEC), which has imposed its executive power over the chamber's regulations. Speaker Laura Borràs explained last Monday to RAC1 that she had made a proposal of collective disobedience that had not been accepted by ERC and CUP. She did not want to give more details, despite public requests for information from all other parliamentary groups. ARA has had access to the Speaker's last proposal to pro-independence parties: it is a brief text with only two generic points that had to be validated. First, the parliamentary Bureau would have to process it and the Parliament could have a vote. JxCat, ERC and the CUP's votes would be enough to get it passed. This is the proposal:

"It's not that we couldn't, it's that we didn't want to". Speaker Laura Borràs has not answered many questions nor given many details, but in an interview on RAC1 she has pointed out culprits for CUP MP Pau Juvillà having been stripped of his seat. Basically, they are, on the one hand, ERC and CUP, who did not accept, she says, the collective disobedience that she proposed and, on the other hand, the chamber's officials, who acted without informing her. Despite being Speaker, Borràs does not assume responsibility for what happened last week because she assures that she was willing to fight "until the end".

The day after the Parliament found out that the CUP MP Pau Juvillà lost his seat has not been much calmer. From 9.30 a.m. until 2 p.m. there have been meetings of bodies such as the Bureau, the Enlarged Bureau and the Board of Spokespersons with the case of the CUP MP again as the topic of the day. This Friday attention has been focused on the pressure the groups have exerted on Speaker Laura Borràs to give explanations on the whole matter. They consider that there are too many questions to be resolved. And this time it has been a unanimous pressure that has come both from the unionist side –PSC and En Comú– and from the pro-independence side –ERC and CUP–.

The Parliament will open a new front in the controversy over the Juvillà case. This Thursday the Bureau will have to decide on CUP MP Pau Juvillà's requesto to delegate his vote. Parliamentary sources confirm to ARA that the CUP will make the request for the plenary that is expected this Thursday but also for next week. And, if nothing changes, the pro-independence majority will accept it. However, neither JxCat nor ERC nor the CUP can guarantee that Juvillà's vote will be counted. In fact, sources point in the opposite direction and even claim that Parliament's lawyers were already made uncomfortable by the CUP's request.

Pau Juvillà was sentenced by the Catalonia's High Court to a six-month disqualification and a €1,080 fine for not removing a yellow ribbon from his office at Lleida city council, of which he was alderman during the municipal elections of 2019. Thereafter, the Central Electoral Board urged Parliament to enforce the ban of the now MP, setting this Friday as a deadline for effective compliance, without waiting for the Supreme Court to resolve the precautionary measures that both Parliament and Juvillà himself have requested. Stripping the CUP MP of his seat is an unacceptable and disproportionate external interference by an administrative body such as the Electoral Board. Moreover, according to Parliament's procedure rules, the case in question does not meet any of the conditions for Juvillà to lose his seat or to be suspended. Thus, the bottom line is obvious: Juvillà would have to continue as MP.

In case of a conviction, the rules of Parliament only foresee one situation in which an MP can be stripped of their seat: if the ruling is final. Until now this had been the line of defence led by Speaker Laura Borràs, with the support of the three pro-independence parties. But given the evidence that this will not happen in the case of Pau Juvillà, as it did not happen in the case of former Catalan president Quim Torra, ERC, JxCat and CUP will ask Parliament to vote on a text which argues that, at least, it should be possible to wait for the Supreme Court to resolve the precautionary measures that both Parliament and Juvillà had requested so the execution of the Central Electoral Board's resolution to strip Juvillà of his seat could be postponed. In the text, which has a long preamble but only four points to vote, the three parties shield themselves in the protection of the civil servants to justify that they will not disobey in the Juvillà case. The text, approved in the commission of the Statute of the Deputy, has received the favourable vote of the pro-independence parties and En Comú, while PSC, Cs, PP and Vox have opposed it. It will now have to be ratified by Parliament.

CUP announced on Monday that Pau Juvillà could not continue developing his usual political activity because he was suffering from a health problem. However, he reaffirmed his will to try to keep his seat despite the electoral board's ruling to trip him of it. This Wednesday, the MP has made public on Twitter that he suffers from cancer, and has done so, he explained, with the aim of breaking the "taboo" about the disease even though this entails exposing part of his "privacy".

Is Pau Juvillà still a member of the Parliament of Catalonia? Although Speaker Laura Borràs, the pro-independence members of the Bureau and their parliamentary groups defend it, in practice there are two ways to check it: if he can vote and if he gets paid at the end of the month. Sources of the CUP assure that Parliament's secretary general Esther Andreu has already informed Juvillà he will stop receiving his salary, in execution of the resolution of the Central Electoral Board (JEC). The secretary general denies this.

The Parliamentary Bureau is studying whether to suspend parliamentary activity following the decision by the Central Electoral Board (JEC) to withdraw strip CUP MP Pau Juvillà of his seat. ARA has learnt it is one of the options that has been valued in the last hours in negotiations between ERC, JxCat and CUP to respond to the situation of "repression" to which they consider the JEC to be subjecting them once again.

Parliamentary Bureau secretary and CUP MP Pau Juvillà is "in a complicated health situation" that will prevent him from continuing to carry out "his usual political activity", CUP informed in a brief four-line statement. Nevertheless, Juvillà continues to demand Parliament not strip him of his seat despite the Electoral Board's ruling, which has given speaker Laura Borràs five days to do so. This Tuesday the Bureau will meet, although Juvillà will not be there as a consequence of his health condition, CUP sources confirm.

As already happened in the case of Quim Torra when he was dispossessed first of his seat in the Parliament and then of his position as president of the Generalitat, in the case of the CUP's Pau Juvillà the disproportion between a conviction for disobedience for keeping some yellow ribbons in the window of his office in Lleida's city hall and the practical consequences, which are to lose his seat, is totally out of place. And this is leaving aside the fact that the sentence itself is questionable because it drives a collision between a supposed right to neutrality of public space during elections with a fundamental right such as freedom of expression. The fact is that once again we are witnessing the interference of the judiciary and a new political-legal battle with an uncertain outcome.

Catalonia's High Court has suspended CUP MP Pau Juvillà for 6 months and handed him a €1,080 fine for disobedience. Juvillà, currently the third secretary of the Catalan Parliamentary Bureau, represented CUP as a local councillor in Lleida. As such, he refused to take down yellow ribbons (used to protest against political prisoners) from the party's office in the Town Council in the spring of 2019 despite receiving an order from the electoral board.