Mixed reaction Catalans remain divided over issue

You can hear the anger in Jose-Fernando Villafane’s voice down the telephone line.

“These people are ruining Spain,” the accountant tells Gulf News from his office in Barcelona. “They all should be jailed.”

The people Villafane is referring to are the leaders behind last October’s illegal referendum on Catalan independence.

“Puigdemont and the [leaders of the Catalan independence movement] are traitors,” he says in his best English. “Traitors”.

Villafane was one of the three million federalists living in Catalan who boycotted that October 1 vote.

“I voted [for the largest pro-Madrid party] Cuidadanos in December, and they are the only real honest party that speaks for Catalonia and Spain,” he insists. In that December 21 election, the party won 36 seats — the largest in the new assembly but dwarfed by the 70 seats won by separatists.

Restaurateur JuanGuanzales Arellano is in the middle of his lunchtime rush, but takes a moment to speak with Gulf News — and he too is equally furious.

“Rajoy is the one committing treason,” says the committed Catalan separatist. “He called an election and the people voted. Now he is spitting in the face of every Catalan and every Spaniard by rejecting democracy, [imprisoning] our leaders. This is not democracy. He is like [dictator] Franco, who ruled Spain from 1936-1974.”