Rajoy moves to impose direct rule
Catalonia’s leaders decry Spanish prime minister’s decision as ‘worst attack on our people since Franco’
MARIANO RAJOY, the Spanish prime minister, has moved to remove Catalonia’s president and his entire government using special powers in Spain’s constitution.
After a crisis cabinet meeting to decide on measures to block the Catalan government bid to achieve independence, Mr Rajoy said he would call elections in the region within six months with the aim of restoring constitutional order. Catalan leaders immediately said they would not accept the plan.
Mr Rajoy said he had tried to avoid imposing direct rule on the region un- der Article 155, but that he had no choice after Carles Puigdemont, the Catalan president, failed to retract the claim that Catalonia had the right to declare independence after an illegal referendum.
“It was not our will, not our intention. We are applying Article 155 because no government of any democratic country can accept that the law be ignored, violated and changed by imposition,” Mr Rajoy said yesterday.
But Mr Puigdemont showed no sign of backing down last night, describing the government’s moves as “the worst attacks against Catalonia’s institutions and people since the decrees of the military dictator Francisco Franco that abolished the Catalan government”.
Mr Puigdemont hinted at a unilateral declaration of independence in the coming days, saying that he would ask the region’s parliament “to debate and decide on the attempt to liquidate our self-government and our democracy, and act accordingly”. Earlier, Carme Forcadell, the speaker of Catalonia’s parliament, described the government’s move as a “de facto coup d’état […] aimed at decapitating and appropriating Catalan institutions. We will not allow it”, she declared. Article 155, unused since Spain’s constitution came into force in 1978, allows a government to take the “necessary measures” and “give instructions” to a regional authority when it acts beyond its legal scope.
Under these special powers, the central government plans to run all departments in Catalonia’s administration or create new bodies to do so. As well as Mr Puigdemont, Oriol Junqueras, Catalonia’s vice president, and all of the region’s ministers would be dismissed from their posts, Mr Rajoy said. The government has sent its request to trigger Article 155 to the senate upper house, where the plan will go to a vote on Friday. Mr Rajoy’s conservative administration is supported by the main opposition socialists, as well as the Ciudadanos party, guaranteeing a comfortable majority for the measures.
In a sign of defiance, Mr Puigdemont yesterday led all members of his government at a demonstration in Barce- lona in protest at the jailing of two pro-independence activists accused of sedition by a Spanish judge.
According to Barcelona police, 450,000 took part in the demonstration, a number almost certainly boosted by Mr Rajoy’s announcement.
A government spokesman said that Spain’s interior ministry would take over security in Catalonia. In case Catalonia’s leaders refuse to accept the implications of Article 155, Madrid has moved to ensure that it will have police muscle on hand to back its decisions.
Before deciding to use Article 155, Mr Rajoy asked Mr Puigdemont if he had declared independence. Mr Puigdemont, who had told the Catalan parliament that the referendum had given Catalonia a mandate for independence, failed to reply unequivocally. In a letter to Mr Rajoy, Mr Puigdemont threatened to present a formal declaration of independence if Article 155 was applied.