The Catalan pro-independence leaders who successfully stood for election in the Spanish General Election from prison, will be released on two separate occasions next week in order to formally register and take up their seats.
The Supreme Court has granted the five politicians – currently on trial for rebellion following the October 2017 referendum – permission to attend a registration process in Spain’s parliament on Monday, as well as the opening debates in either the Congress or Senate the following day.
Oriol Junqueras, Jordi Turull, Josep Rull and Jordi Sànchez will be escorted to the Congress, where they were elected as MPs, while Raül Romeva will be officially sworn in as a senator.
Earlier in the week, Supreme Court magistrates in Madrid had already given their approval for the five men to take part in the first plenary sessions of the new parliamentary term on Tuesday.
Yet their request for release pending the verdict of the rebellion trial in order to begin work as elected representatives was turned down by the judges in a ruling made public the same day.
The Catalan pro-independence politicians will be allowed to move around freely within the chambers, but police officers will be stationed at the doors in case of any prospective escape attempts.
Congress and Senate sources say that the former Catalan government leaders will be taken out of prison and brought into the chamber buildings via the underground car park.
The leader of the left-wing party Esquerra Republicana (ERC) party and former Catalan vice-president, Junqueras, became a Spanish MP on 28 April alongside former ministers for Junts per Catalunya (JxCat), Turull and Rull, and Sànchez, an activist turned politician and former Catalan parliament member. Romeva, former Catalan foreign minister and also an ERC member, won a Senate seat.
The decision to allow them to register as MPs prompted the court to postpone Day 45 of the trial against the pro-independence officials, scheduled for Monday, until Wednesday.
Catalan Trial: click here full details of those accused, the charges, and the accusers.