A supporter of Catalan independence,[6][7] and former member of Democratic Union of Catalonia and Reagrupament,[2] Torra does not currently belong to any political party.

[10][12][8] His parents later returned to Santa Coloma de Farners where his father was a municipal councillor in 1991 and where his widowed mother still lives.

[14] When AXA took over Winterthur Torra was offered a position in Madrid but he chose to return to Catalonia to devote himself to journalism and publishing.

[10][11] Torra has written several books on the history of Catalonia, journalism and biographies and in 2009 he won the "Carles Rahola" award for "Viatge Involuntari a la Catalunya Impossible", an essay on the history of Catalan journalism that mixes fact and fiction to narrate the life of several Catalan journalists during the Second Spanish Republic, including Just Cabot, Lluís Capdevila, Àngel Ferran, Manuel Fontdevila and Francisco Madrid.

[10][14] In June 2012 he became director of the Born Centre de Cultura i Memòria but in September 2015, shortly after Ada Colau became mayor, he left the organisation.

[15] Torra is a member of the pro-Catalan independence Òmnium Cultural (OC), of which he was vice-president from 2013 to 2015, and Assemblea Nacional Catalana (ANC).

[6][32] On 19 May he appointed his government, which included as regional ministers, Jordi Turull and Josep Rull (in preventive custody) as well as Toni Comín and Lluís Puig, in self-imposed exile in Belgium and also required by the Spanish justice.

[33][34][35] Since article 155 was still in force, Mariano Rajoy decided not to publish the appointments in the Generalitat government gazette, which led to a criminal complaint for prevarication brought by President Torra.

In order to avoid extending the application of article 155, on 29 May President Torra appointed a new government,[36] which took office on 2 June, which ended a period of seven months of direct rule on Catalonia from Madrid.

[24][38][39][40] In an online editorial, he metaphorically described people who live in Catalonia but reject Catalan-nationalism and culture as "beasts" or "scavengers, vipers, hyenas", who have "a little bump in their DNA chain".

[50] On 19 December 2019, Torra was sentenced by the High Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) to a year and a half of disqualification (inhabilitación) from holding any elected office and/or from exercising government powers, in addition to a fine of €30,000 for disobeying the Central Electoral Board (JEC) by not withdrawing partisan symbols in the Palau de la Generalitat and not guaranteeing the institution's neutrality during the April election campaign.

[54][55] The JEC left open to interpretation if losing the seat would also entail the disqualification from the post of president of the regional government.

[61] A day after Torra argued that "the (legislative) term had no political future if unity cannot be maintained" and announced his intention to call a new election, but not until the regional budget was passed.