Call for Catalan vote on EU exit

CARLES PUIGDEMONT has called for a Brexit-style vote on whether Catalonia should leave the European Union, deepening the breach with Brussels over its support for Spain against the independence movement.

Speaking from his self-imposed exile in Belgium, the ousted Catalan leader lashed out at the EU as a “club of decadent, obsolete countries” with power concentrated in the hands of a few and entwined with “ever more questionable” economic interests. “Let’s see what the people of Catalonia say. Perhaps there are not many people who want to be part of this Eu...so insensitive to the abuse of human rights, of the democratic right of a part of its territory, only because a post-franco Right wants it to be that way,” he said.

Mr Puigdemont’s suggestion, to an Israeli TV station, was dismissed as “absurd” by Mariano Rajoy, the Spanish prime minister, while a spokesman for the European Commission pointedly remarked that Europe was a “union of democracies, based on the rule of law”. Mr Puigdemont’s Catalan Democratic Party (Pdecat) and the Republican Left (ERC), its former coalition partner, both appeared blindsided by his outburst, saying yesterday that they support remaining in Europe.

Mr Puigdemont, himself fighting extradition to Spain, sought to roll back on his comments yesterday, tweeting that the Catalan independence movement was pro-european and that he wanted a reformed union, ahead of the Dec 21 elections in Catalonia.