Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has given Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont until Thursday morning to fall in line amid uncertainty over whether the territory is declaring independence.
Rajoy said Puigdemont faces the possibility of Spain activating Article 155 of the Constitution, which would allow the central government to rescind some of the powers that Catalonia has to govern itself.
The wealthy northeast region, which includes Barcelona, is home to 7.5 million people and contributes a fifth of Spain’s 1.1 trillion-euro ($1.3 trillion) economy. Polls have shown about half of the people there don’t want to secede.
Catalan regional government president Carles Puigdemont delivers a speech on the sidelines of a wreath-laying ceremony commemorating the 77th anniversary of the death of Catalan leader Lluis Companys at the Montjuic Cemetery in Barcelona, October 15, 2017. (AFP/PAU BARRENA)
“To extend this situation of uncertainty is only favoring those who are trying to destroy civic concord and impose a radical and impoverishing project in Catalonia,” Rajoy wrote in a letter after Puigdemont asked for two months of negotiations and mediation.
“It wasn’t very difficult to say yes or no,” Rajoy’s number 2, deputy prime minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria, tells reporters in Madrid. “That was the question that was asked and the response shouldn’t be complicated.”
— with AP
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