Spanish court warns Catalan MPS against move to independence
Spain’s Constitutional Court has ordered Catalonia’s parliament to suspend a planned session next week at which separatist MPS wanted to declare independence – further fuelling the country’s worst political crisis in decades.
Catalan regional authorities have previously ignored Constitutional Court orders and it was not clear last night whether the session would go ahead and if all parties would attend.
The court said its order could be appealed, but also warned Catalan parliament speaker Carme Forcadell and other members of the speakers’ board that they could face prosecution for failing to halt the session.
Ms Forcadell called the suspension a “violation of freedom of speech”.
“I won’t allow censorship to enter Parliament,” she said without clarifying whether the meeting would go ahead or not.
Earlier, Spain’s prime minister Mariano Rajoy urged the leader of the regional Catalan government, Carles Puigdemont, to cancel plans for declaring independence in order to avoid “greater evils”.
In an interview with Spain’s official EFE news agency, Mr Rajoy said the solution in Catalonia “is the prompt return to legality and the affirmation, as early as possible, that there will be no unilateral declaration of independence, because that way greater evils will be avoided”.
Mr Rajoy’s remarks were the first he made publicly since Sunday, when Catalonia held a banned referendum on independence, amid police violence. Mr Puigdemont said the results of the vote validated the push to secede.
On Wednesday, Mr Puigdemont toned down his defiant stance by calling for mediation in the conflict, although he maintained the plan to declare secession next week.
The court order came as political uncertainty over Catalonia’s secession bid started spreading to the economy, with stock markets falling and big Catalan firms relocating or considering a move to elsewhere in Spain.
Banco Sabadell, one of Catalonia’s largest banks and Spain’s fifth in volume of assets, said in a statement to the Spanish stock regulator yesterday that it was relocating the bank’s base to the eastern city of Alicante.
The move is largely symbolic, given that the company’s headquarters would remain in the Catalan regional capital, Barcelona, but it is aimed at remaining under the protective umbrella of the European Central Bank.