‘Catalonia will declare independence in days’
> Spanish king slams secession bid
BARCELONA: Spain is bracing for further political upheaval yesterday after Catalonia’s leader said the region would declare independence “in a matter of days”.
Carles Puigdemont said his government would “act at the end of this week or the beginning of next”, the Catalan regional leader told the BBC in an interview on Tuesday.
He spoke after hundreds of thousands of Catalans rallied in fury over violence by police against voters during a banned referendum on independence for their region on Sunday.
A general strike in the region shut down tourist sites, Barcelona football club and the city’s major port.
The central government and national courts branded the referendum illegal.
But Catalan leaders claimed the results showed the region had the right to secede and said they may unilaterally declare independence.
“We are going to declare independence 48 hours after all the official results are counted,” Puigdemont said in the interview.
His remarks came hours after Spain’s King Felipe VI ratched up tensions by urging authorities to defend “constitutional order”.
Felipe’s dramatic intervention late on Tuesday aimed to calm Spain’s deepest political crisis in decades, but risked further fanning resentment in the region.
Felipe, 49, abandoned his previously measured tone over tensions with Catalonia, accusing its leaders of acting outside the law.
“With their irresponsible conduct they could put at risk the economic and social stability of Catalonia and all of Spain,” he said.
“It is the responsibility of the legitimate state powers to ensure constitutional order.”
Felipe repeated his earlier calls for harmony between Spaniards.
But after Sunday’s violence it was a delicate balancing act for a Spanish sovereign.
People watching in a bar in Barcelona whistled and booed after the king’s speech.
“It is a real disgrace. Far from solving anything it has added fuel to the fire,” 61-yearold trucker Domingo Gutierrez said.
“He did not say a word about the people who were injured.
“I have never been proindependence, my parents are from Andalucia. But now I am more for independence than anyone, thanks to people like that.”
Police unions and political experts warned that Spain’s government risks losing control of the northeastern region.
It is considered Spain’s worst political crisis since the death of the dictator Francisco Franco in 1977.
Hundreds of thousands of protesters in Barcelona on Tuesday yelled for national security forces to get out of the region, branding them “occupation forces”. – AFP