Quim Torra

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Quim Torra (2018)

Joaquim "Quim" Torra i Pla (born December 28, 1962 in Blanes , Girona province ) is a Spanish lawyer , publicist , author and politician who advocates the separation of Catalonia from Spain and a sharply separatist course. From May 2018 to September 2020 he was President of the Generalitat de Catalunya , the regional government of Catalonia. In September 2020, a judgment passed against him became final, according to which he is not allowed to hold political office for 18 months.

Life

Career

Torra studied law at the Autonomous University of Barcelona until 1985 . This was followed by a position as a lawyer at the Winterthur Insurance Group in Switzerland. Then he returned to Catalonia. In 2007 he founded the publishing house A Contra Vent , which is dedicated to Catalanism and focuses on topics from the period of the Second Spanish Republic and exile.

In 2009 he won the Carles Rahola Prize for his work Viatge involuntari a la Catalunya impossible . In this essay he looks at the work and careers of several Catalan journalists from the time of the Second Spanish Republic, including Just Cabot, Francesc Madrid, Àngel Ferran, Lluís Capdevila and Manuel Fontdevila. In February 2011 he replaced Agustí Bassols as president of the Catalan association Sobirania i Justícia ("Sovereignty and Justice") and was elected to the permanent council of the separatist movement Assemblea Nacional Catalana the following month . Also in 2011 he was appointed managing director of the city's cultural promotion company Foment de Ciutat Vella in Barcelona and in 2012 he was appointed director of the Born Center de Cultura i Memòria .

In 2015 Torra was temporarily chairman of the Catalan separatist cultural association Òmnium Cultural . In May 2015 he became editor of the magazine Revista de Catalunya before the Catalan Autonomous Government appointed him head of the Center d'Estudis de Temes Contemporanis ("Study Center for Contemporary Issues") on March 7, 2016 . He also worked as a columnist for various media. In his statements, he takes the ideological basic position of a sharply anti-Spanish Catalan nationalism, which does not recognize the constitution of the Kingdom of Spain as a basis and which became an intellectual foundation of the so-called Procés (i.e. the independence efforts sanctioned by the regional government).

Political career

In the elections to the Parliament of Catalonia on December 21, 2017, Torra was elected as a member of the list of the separatist electoral alliance Junts per Catalunya (Jxcat). On May 10, 2018, Carles Puigdemont surprisingly nominated him as a presidential candidate for Catalonia. On May 14th, he was elected by the regional parliament as the new President of the Generalitat by a narrow majority (66 votes, 65 against and with 4 abstentions from the separatist CUP ) in the second ballot; in his speech to the regional parliament he described himself as a transitional candidate; the legitimate president is still Puigdemont; He will be loyal to the result of the referendum on October 1, 2017 - declared illegal by the Spanish Constitutional Court - which mandated him to build an independent Catalan republic. In order to be sworn in as regional president of Catalonia, the Spanish flag was removed, and contrary to custom, Torra refused to express his loyalty to the Spanish constitution and the Spanish king . On June 2, his cabinet was sworn in.

Even in the separatist camp, Torra is considered a hardliner who polarizes and polemizes strongly. After his nomination for Prime Minister, he was criticized for tweets and other publications that were classified as xenophobic and racist towards Spain and the Spanish. As prime minister, he declared that the Spanish state was violent and had suffered democratic bankruptcy; the only political goal could be a break with Spain and a Catalan republic; he will also not recognize the outstanding judgments of the Spanish judiciary in the trial against former regional ministers and activists . Torra described himself as the “governor” of Puigdemont for the time he had to live in “exile”. His government did not accept political détente from the socialist Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez , whose minority government was tolerated by the Catalan left party ERC . The affairs of government of the Generalitat in Catalonia were at the same time marked by a complete standstill, as Torra could not submit a budget to the regional parliament due to a lack of consensus within the separatist government majority.

The conflict with the central state escalated when Torra repeatedly refused to remove separatist symbols from public institutions during the 2019 European elections , despite a court order.

Torra was fined and banned from office by the Catalan Supreme Court in July 2019 for repeated violations of this judicial order by the regional government. Even before the judgment became final, the Spanish Central Electoral Committee decided at the beginning of January 2020 that Torra's mandate in the regional parliament was suspended due to disobedience and that he could no longer exercise his office as Prime Minister of Catalonia. When it became clear at the end of January 2020 that he could no longer rely on the full support of his coalition partner ERC in parliament, he announced new elections to the regional parliament in Catalonia before the judgments against him came into force, but without naming an election date. At the same time he led the political talks initiated by ERC and rejected by Jxcat between the Generalitat and the government in Madrid.

In September 2020, the Spanish Supreme Court upheld the ban imposed by the Catalan Supreme Court. According to this, Torra is not allowed to hold public office for a year and a half and has to pay a fine of 30,000 euros. After the court ruling, there were demonstrations in Catalonia against the deposition of Torras. Sections of the left central government also criticized the court decision as an unnecessary provocation. Torras will be taken over by his previous deputy, Catalonia's Minister of Economic Affairs and Finance, Pere Aragonès .

Publications

  • With Ramon Creus: Girona encisa . 2005.
  • Ganivetades Suïsses . 2007.
  • Periodism? Permetine! La vida i els articles d'Eugeni Xammar . 2008 (biography of Eugeni Xammar ).
  • With Miquel Joseph i Mayol, Jaume Ciurana: El Bibliobús de la Llibertat . 2008.
  • Viatge involuntari a la Catalunya impossible . 2010.
  • Honorables. Cartes a la pàtria perduda . 2011.
  • Un bohemi al cabaret del món. Vida de Manuel Fontdevila, un senyor de Granollers . A Contra Vent, Barcelona 2013, ISBN 978-84-15720-11-9 .

See also

Web links

Commons : Quim Torra  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ El País : Quim Torra: nacionalismo sin filtros , May 14, 2018, accessed on the same day (Spanish)
  2. ↑ Hans-Christian Rößler, Madrid: After Puigdemont's withdrawal: New candidate, new chance for Catalonia? In: Frankfurter Allgemeine. May 11, 2018. Retrieved May 11, 2018 .
  3. ↑ a b Hans-Christian Rössler: Torra lacks the necessary majority in the regional parliament , Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of May 12, 2018
  4. ↑ El Pais: Quim Torra reitera que su prioridad es construir la “república catalana” y el proceso constituyente , May 14, 2018, accessed on the same day (Spanish)
  5. ↑ Separatist Torra sworn in as head of government. In: Handelsblatt , May 17, 2018.
  6. ↑ Nationalist by calling: This man is the new head of government of Catalonia . In: NZZ , May 14, 2018, accessed on the same day.
  7. ↑ Los tuits xenófobos de Quim Torra . In: El País , May 12, 2018, accessed on May 14 (Spanish).
  8. ↑ Catalan President: Out with the beasts! In: FAZ , May 24, 2018, accessed on the same day.
  9. ↑ Torra quiere plantear un desafío al Estado: o referéndum o ruptura . In: La Vanguardia , August 30, 2018, accessed the same day (Spanish).
  10. ↑ Thomas Urban : "The independent republic remains our goal". In: Süddeutsche Zeitung , February 12, 2019.
  11. ↑ La “inoperancia” of the Govern de Torra, a debate in the parliament . In: La Vanguardia , April 1, 2018 (Spanish).
  12. ↑ ¿A dónde lleva el simbolismo de los lazos? In: La Vanguardia , March 22, 2019, accessed the same day (Spanish).
  13. ↑ La Junta Electoral acuerda destituir a Quim Torra tras su condena por desobediencia. In: El País , January 3, 2020 (Spanish).
  14. ↑ Torra adelanta las elecciones en Cataluña y anunciará la fecha después de la aprobación de los presupuestos. In: El País , January 29, 2020, accessed on March 2, 2020 (Spanish).
  15. ↑ Spain's Supreme Court: Catalonia's Prime Minister Quim Torra is banned from office. In: Frankfurter Rundschau , September 28, 2020.
  16. ↑ Spain's judiciary removes the head of government of Catalonia. In: FAZ , September 28, 2020.
  17. ↑ Thousands demonstrate in Catalonia . In: ZDF , September 29, 2020.
  18. ↑ Catalan regional president Torra finally removed from office. In: Deutschlandfunk , September 29, 2020.
personal data
SURNAME Torra, Quim
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Torra i Pla, Joaquim (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Spanish lawyer, writer and Catalan politician
DATE OF BIRTH December 28, 1962
PLACE OF BIRTH Blanes