King Felipe lays down law to Catalans
Separatist disloyalty branded ‘unacceptable’
MADRID: King Felipe VI told Catalan separatists trying to break up his country that their “unacceptable disloyalty” has no place in any democratic state, as he vowed to keep Spain together.
In a televised address to the nation on Tuesday night, King Felipe said the regional government has sown division among its own people with its repeated and deliberate violations of Spanish law, and put the economic well-being and social harmony of the whole country at risk.
“They have shown an unacceptable disloyalty toward the power of the state,” King Felipe said.
“Today Catalan society is fractured, set against itself.”
Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is fighting to maintain control after 2.3 million Catalans defied both the central government and the Constitutional Court to cast ballots in a makeshift referendum on independence.
Regional police ignored orders to shut down the vote on Sunday. For King Felipe, the crisis may be a defining moment of his three-year reign, like the attempted coup which sought to topple his father’s nascent democracy in 1981.
“Certain officials in Catalonia have repeatedly, consciously and purposefully breached the constitution,” King Felipe said, speaking from a desk with a laptop to his side and the Spanish and European Union flags behind him.
Mr Rajoy, who heads a minority government, is struggling to find the political support he wants for an unprecedented move against the separatists, and the king’s intervention may help sway the doubters.
He made no reference to Sunday’s violence, nor to voters who were injured during the crackdown.
Some 700,000 demonstrators flooded the streets of Barcelona on Tuesday to express their outrage at the crackdown by Spanish police, according to local officials.
The main opposition Socialists are reluctant to share responsibility for any plan to push out the Catalan leadership, after seeing the prime minister bungle Sunday’s crackdown.
Catalan President Carles Puigdemont has promised a formal announcement to regional lawmakers of the referendum results, triggering a 48-hour countdown to a unilateral declaration of independence.
He said his government would act at the end of this week or the beginning of next.