The suspension of the Catalan government will come into force immediately after the Spanish Cabinet signs it this afternoon and it is published in the BOE (Official State Gazette) on Saturday. Mariano Rajoy has today obtained the support of the Spanish Senate to remove the Catalan government from office, earning full powers to intervene gradually in Catalonia, except for in the public media, thanks to the majority of PP (Popular Party), PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) and Ciudadanos (Citizens). The three Spanish parties jumped together into the unknown territory of article 155 just after the Catalan Parliament voted to approve independence.
"The minority parties in Catalonia want to decide our future" said ERC (Catalan Republican Left) senator Mirella Cortès about an agreement sealed in the upper chamber between three parties who have, out of 135 deputies total, 25, 16 and 11 seats each in the Catalan Parliament. Cortès said that the pro-independence parties (with 72 seats total) wanted to "decide" something that would affect their lives and that, as such, they were taking the unilateral declaration of independence to a vote. She was supported by Josep Lluís Cleries of PDeCAT (Catalan European Democratic Party), who warned that the "authoritarian" measure of article 155 wouldn't achieve the "indoctrination" of the public and the imposed ministers wouldn't be recognised.
As for Unidos Podemos (United We Can, which includes Podemos), they directly attacked PSOE after the party rejected their own amendment which would leave open the option of article 155 being suspended if Catalan president Puigdemont were to call regional elections, once they had learned that independence would be voted on this Friday. In strong words via senator Ramón Espinar, they doubted PSOE's embrace of a plurinational Spain and said that Rajoy had "decreed the ruin of Spain".
PSOE did manage to alter one of the side measures approved by the Spanish Cabinet on 21st October, removing the spectre of intervention from the Catalan public media TV3, Catalunya Ràdio and ACN (Catalan News Agency). The unease of Catalan PSOE senators towards the agreement was made evident as former Catalan president José Montilla left the chamber before the vote. He was accompanied in leaving by the former president of the Balearic Islands, Francesc Antich, as a demonstration of rejection of the intervention in Catalonia.