Catalan lawmakers elect separatist as parliamentary speaker

BARCELONA,  Catalan lawmakers on Wednesday 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. 
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