One day before the Catalan Parliament session in which, according to the Referendum Law, independence should be formally declared, Barcelona's mayor Ada Colau has called on Catalan president Carles Puigdemont to renounce this path. In an extraordinary official statement this Monday, Colau argued that the results of the 1st October referendum aren't a "guarantee". Similarly, she called on Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy to discount using article 155 of the Spanish Constitution to revoke Catalan autonomy, as she believes this would only worsen the situation.
On the one hand, Colau called on Puigdemont to not "be hasty", despite the moment his political commitment. A unilateral path, she warned, could "put in danger social cohesion and the Catalan institutions". She said that "the results of 1st October cannot be a guarantee to proclaim independence", but could be used to open "dialogue and international mediation". She argued that now is the time for "gestures of reducing tension from the two sides".
As such, she also address Mariano Rajoy, asking him to act responsibly and to listen to the public. According to Colau, that means discounting invoking article 155, reverting the intervention in the Catalan institutions and removing the Spanish police units from Catalonia. "To open a dialogue space, institutional normality must be regained".
Barcelona's mayor also had a message for the main Spanish opposition party, PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party), reminding them that there are parliamentary paths and majority support for finding a solution to the democratic conflict. "I celebrate that, in the last few days, they've started talking of dialogue. Now we need actions, not words," she said.
Colau finally made a call for "trenches and warmongering language" to be abandoned. She said that Catalonia and Spain and in the middle of the "most serious institutional crisis since the reestablishment of democracy [in 1977, after the Franco dictatorship]". She referred to all the demonstrations that have taken place in the last days and weeks, which have "no precedents" and deserve to not be ignored.