Spain’s king calls for calm and unity in Catalonia crisis

SPAIN’S King Felipe VI has urged Catalan politicians to respect their region’s diversity and avoid another confrontation over independence.

The king’s remarks in a Christmas Eve speech came three days after separatist parties, led by Carles Puigdemont, the ousted president, won an absolute majority of seats in a parliamentary vote.

The wealthy north-eastern region’s newly elected parliament must “face the problems that affect all Catalans, with respect to plurality and bearing in mind their responsibility to the common good,” the king said.

“The road cannot lead again to confrontation and exclusion, which as we already know generate nothing but discord, uncertainty and discouragement,” he said at his Madrid residence, flanked by Spanish and EU flags.

The Spanish government called the election after sacking Mr Puigdemont’s cabinet, dissolving the Catalan parliament and stripping the region of its treasured autonomy following an independence declaration on Oct 27.

The declaration inflamed passions across Spain. It followed a banned independence referendum on Oct 1, which led to a brutal police crackdown that focused the world’s attention on the Catalan crisis.

Two days after the referendum, the king made a rare televised speech, condemning the separatists’ “unacceptable disloyalty”.

On Sunday, he reiterated his call for unity, though his tone was more conciliatory. He called on the region’s leaders to help “Catalonia’s society – diverse and plural as it is – to recover its serenity, stability and mutual respect, in such a way as to ensure that ideas… do not separate families and friends from each other”. Spain is now “a mature democracy, where any citizen can … defend, freely and democratically, his opinions and ideas; but not impose his ideas in a standoff with the rights of others”, he added.