Catalan regional parliament to hold key session on Thursday

BARCELONA: Catalonia’s regional parliament will hold a plenary meeting on Thursday, a lawmaker with the ruling Catalan separatist coalition said on Monday. Many fear the session will become a cover for a vote on declaring independence from Spain.

Catalan president Carles Puig de month as asked the parliament to convene a debate and vote on how to respond to the central Spanish government’ s plan, announced over the weekend, to take direct control of the northeastern region.

Puigdemont’s speech on Saturday was seen as a veiled threat of form ali sing an ambiguous declaration of independence earlier this month that he declared suspended in order to earn time for negotiations.

Spain says that no dialogue is possible with independence on the table and is maneuvering to sack all the Catalan top officials and call a snap regional election in the next six months.

Spanish Prime Minister Maria no Rajoy announced on Saturday he was seeking to trigger Article 155 of the Spanish consti- tution allowing Madrid to intervene in running Catalonia, after the region voted in favor of independence from Spain in a banned October 1 referendum.

Rajoy’s move was met with anger and shock in Catalonia.

The far-left separatist CUP Party issued an announcement on Monday calling for “mass civil disobedience.” It described Rajoy’s move as “the greatest aggression against the civil, individual and collective rights of the Catalan people” since the dictatorship of Gen Francisco Franco, who died in 1975. AP