Leonid Bershidsky, Columnist

Government by Skype? It's Worth a Shot

The Catalan government's next leader may be based in Brussels.

January 18, 2018 at 7:00 AM UTC

Leonid Bershidsky, formerly Bloomberg Opinion’s Europe columnist, is a member of the Bloomberg News Automation Team. He recently published Russian translations of George Orwell’s “1984” and Franz Kafka’s “The Trial.”

Phoning it in.
Photographer: David Ramos/Getty Images

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The Catalan parliament is considering what could be the most exciting experiment in modern politics: an attempt to form a government-in-exile that would actually govern.

As head of the government last year, Carles Puigdemont led the region to unilaterally declare independence from Spain. Spain responded by imposing direct rule, and issuing arrest warrants for him and other separatists. Puigdemont fled to Brussels, where he remains.