Catalan party: We won’t go quietly

CUP warns of riot if regional govt is dismissed

BARCELONA: A far-left Catalan party has threatened “massive civil disobedience” if Spain dismisses the region’s government to stave off its threat to declare independence.

The Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP) party denounced Madrid’s plans as the “biggest aggression” against the Catalan people since the Franco dictatorship.

“This aggression will receive a response in the form of massive civil disobedience,” said the party, a key regional power broker, in a statement yesterday.

The CUP’s threat upped the stakes in the stand-off over Catalan independence, which has raised fears of unrest in Spain’s deepest political crisis in decades.

Half a million angry separatists took to the streets of Barcelona on Saturday after Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy announced that he would remove Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont and his executive.

Rajoy said Madrid would take control of ministries under unprecedented measures to stop the region from breaking away.

The CUP is a key ally of the ruling separatist coalition in the regional parliament.

It said details of the protest actions it was planning would be unveiled later this week.

Catalan parties were scheduled to meet yesterday to set a date and agenda for a gath- ering of the regional parliament to debate their next steps.

Such a session could give the ruling separatists another opportunity to declare unilateral independence. They have been threatening to do so since holding a banned referendum on the issue on Oct 1.

“What happens now, with everyone in agreement and unity, is that we will announce what we will do and how,” Catalan government spokesman Jordi Turull said.

He denounced what he called “a fullyfledged coup against Catalan institutions”.

Though polls indicate that Catalans are divided on whether to break away from Spain, autonomy remains a sensitive issue in the northeastern region of 7.5 million people.

Catalonia fiercely defends its language and culture and has previously enjoyed control over its policing, education and healthcare.

Francisco Franco, who ruled from 1939 until 1975, took Catalonia’s political powers away and banned official use of the Catalan language.

In the fallout from the referendum, Spain’s government says it had no choice but to use previously untested constitutional powers to seize control of the region in order to preserve the unity of the country. — AFP