Spanish PM aims to take over Catalan government

BARCELONA, Spain — Spain announced an unprecedented plan Saturday to sack Catalonia’s separatist leaders, install its own people in their place and call a new local election, using previously untapped constitutional powers to take control of the prosperous region threatening to secede.

Catalonia’s president responded by making a veiled independence threat, telling lawmakers to come up with a plan to counter Spain’s “attempt to wipe out self-government.”

Even moderate Catalans were aghast at the scope of the move, greeting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s announcement with banging pots and honking cars in the streets of Barcelona, the regional capital.

In a televised address late Saturday, Catalan President Carles Puigdemont called Rajoy’s plans to replace him and his cabinet an “attempt to humiliate” Catalonia and an “attack on democracy.” He called on the regional parliament to “debate and decide on the attempt to wipe out our self-government and our democracy, and act accordingly.”

Puigdemont called Rajoy’s move “the worst attack” on Catalan people and institutions since Gen. Francisco Franco’s abolishment of Catalonia’s regional government in 1939.

Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau, who opposes independence without a valid referendum, called Rajoy’s measures “a serious attack” on self-government in Catalonia. Others went further. Catalan parliament speaker Carme Forcadell accused Spain’s central authorities of carrying out a coup.

“Mariano Rajoy has announced a de facto coup d’etat with the goal of ousting a democratically elected government,” Forcadell said, calling it “an authoritarian blow within a member of the European Union.”

After a special Cabinet session to derail Catalonia’s independence movement, Rajoy said he wants the country’s Senate to allow central ministers to take over the jobs of all senior members of the Catalan government, including control over the regional police, finances and the public media.

Rajoy also is seeking the Senate’s approval to assume the power to call a regional election — something only Catalonia’s top leader can do now.

The vice president of the Senate said a session next Friday will vote on the measures.