MARIANO Rajoy’s dismissal of calls to quit as Spain’s prime minister will be tested later this week when he faces a vote of no confidence.

The congress of deputies – the lower house of the Spanish parliament – will hold a debate on Thursday on whether he should be replaced by Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez, with a vote on the opposition’s no-confidence motion on Friday.

With the exception of Rajoy’s People’s Party (PP), all other major parties are calling for him to step down after corruption convictions against business people and officials tied to his party.

Until now he has fended off the pressure and dismissed the opposition campaign as “opportunist”.

Sanchez has yet to garner enough support to defeat Rajoy with an absolute majority of the 350 seats in the seriously fragmented chamber.

The Socialists have the backing of the far-left, anti-establishment Podemos party, but would need votes from deputies in the pro-business Ciudadanos (Citizens) party or pro-independence groups for their leader to replace Rajoy.

Citizens is a rising star in the centre-right of Spanish politics and is led by Albert Rivera, a young Catalan. The party is refusing to support Sanchez and instead is seeking an early general election.

Recent polls have given Rivera’s party a strong chance of coming first in an election, positioning him to become prime minister, but without winning a majority to form a government on its own.

One poll released yesterday indicated that the PP would lose 74 of their 137 seats – becoming the fourth party behind Citizens (with 108), the Socialists (85) and Together We Can (66).

Rivera yesterday stepped up pressure on Rajoy to step down even though Citizens refuses to support the Socialist candidate.

“There is a minority government that is alone and holding on to power, with a prime minister that is not reacting,” Rivera told journalists.

Spain’s national court last week convicted 29 people, including PP supporters and officials, on charges of fraud, tax evasion and money laundering, handing down sentences totalling more than 350 years in what is known as the “Gürtel case”.

The court also fined the PP €245,000 euros (£214,200) for benefitting between 1999 and 2005 from “an authentic and efficient system of institutional corruption” that provided party officials with bribes from business people in exchange for public contracts.

Judges also found evidence that a slush fund helped finance the party and questioned the sincerity of Rajoy’s testimony.

Neither PP, which is appealing against the verdict, nor Rajoy were defendants, but the prime minister had to testify as a witness.

Yesterday, the court detained the PP’s former treasurer, Luis Bárcenas, who had been sentenced to 33 years after prosecutors said he was a flight risk.

It also sent to prison the former mayor of Majadahonda, Guillermo Ortega, and the Alberto López Viejo, a former politician from Madrid, who had been sentenced to more than 30 years.

The remaining 13 who were convicted and for whom prosecutors had requested precautionary measures – mostly jail – will discover their fate tomorrow.

In another development, Rafael Ribó, the Catalan ombudsman, has said all pro-independence leaders who are imprisoned in Madrid should be “immediately” released while awaiting “a trial with all guarantees and a final verdict”.

Nine people are currently in pre-trial jail facing criminal charges for their role in October’s independence referendum.

Ribó yesterday presented a report to Roger Torrent, speaker of the Catalan parliament, and said there should be a “constructive dialogue” to reach a peaceful solution to the conflict between Catalonia and Spain.

He said the solution had to go far beyond institutional politics and include “civil societies in Catalonia and the rest of the state”, as well as figures from across the political spectrum.

Ribó also made reference to incidents on Catalan beaches and other public spaces where yellow symbols in support of jailed Catalan leaders had been destroyed by unionists.

He said coexistence in Catalonia was a “treasure that should be preserved” and urged people not to “manipulate it for partisan reasons”.

Meanwhile, punk singer Evaristo Páramos was arrested and temporarily held by Spanish guardia civil officers after a weekend gig in Andalucía.

Officers escorted him off the stage after he finished performing, although they later denied that he had been charged over his lyrics.

The Basque pro-independence party EH Bildu tweeted: “In Spain, freedom of speech does not exist”, and expressed support for Páramos, and “all artists who are under threat for criticising the system with their songs, books, and other artistic expressions”.

Several artists in Spain have been sentenced to jail for lyrics and public statements. Mallorcan rapper Valtonyc, sentenced to more than three years, left the country last week and he is thought to be in Belgium.