Catalan lawmakers elect separatist as parliamentary speaker

Catalan lawmakers today elected a separatist as parliamentary speaker, a first step in a plan by pro-independence deputies to get regional leader Carles Puigdemont, in self-exile in Belgium, back into power.

A member of the left-wing ERC party, Roger Torrent was elected with 65 votes against 56 for an anti-independence candidate in an assembly where eight seats were empty, their occupants in jail over their role in Catalonia's independence drive or in self-imposed exile in Belgium.