On the attack

WORLD: Spain announced an unprecedented plan to sack Catalonia’s separatist leaders, install its own people in their place and call a new local election.

SPAIN: Spain announced an unprecedented plan yesterday to sack Catalonia’s separatist leaders, install its own people in their place and call a new local election, using previously untapped constitutional powers to take control of the prosperous region that is threatening to secede.

Catalonia’s president responded by making a veiled independence threat, telling lawmakers to come up with a plan to counter Spain’s ``attempt to wipe out self-government.’'

Even moderate Catalans were aghast at the scope of the move, greeting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s announcement with banging pots and honking cars in the streets of Barcelona, the regional capital.

Catalan President Carles Puigdemont called Rajoy’s plans to replace him and his cabinet an ``attempt to humiliate’' Catalonia and an ``attack on democracy.’' He called on the regional parliament to ``debate and decide on the attempt to wipe out our selfgovernment and our democracy, and act accordingly.’'

Puigdemont called Rajoy’s move the ``the worst attack’' on Catalan people and institutions since Gen. Francisco Franco’s abolishment of Catalonia’s regional government in 1939.

Barcelona mayor Ada Colau, who opposes independence without a valid referendum, called Rajoy’s measures ``a serious attack’' on self-government in Catalonia. Others went further. Catalan parliament speaker Carme Forcadell accused Spain’s central authorities of carrying out a coup.

``Mariano Rajoy has announced a de facto coup d’etat with the goal of ousting a democratically elected government,’' Forcadell said, calling it ``an authoritarian blow within a member of the European Union.’' -AP

PHOTO: REUTERS A protester shouts slogans during a demonstration organised by Catalan pro-independence movements following the imprisonment of two activists.