The Constitutional Court has suspended the Referendum Law, according to sources from the court. An appeal, announced by prime minister Mariano Rajoy in a press conference, had been lodged by the Spanish government this Thursday, after the Parliament voted to pass the law on Wednesday evening. "They're trying to impose the referendum in a rushed, slapdash and illegal way and it won't happen. There will be no self-determination referendum because it aims to deprive all Spaniards of the right to decide their future," said Rajoy accompanied by his cabinet.
Formally, the suspension has come because it was asked for in the unconstitutionality petition formulated by the Spanish government, entering into force automatically when the Constitutional Court accepted to consider the appeal. Also suspended are the nomination of the Electoral Syndicate (the vote's oversight board of legal experts) and the two decrees from the government (supplementary laws and the official call). This happened during a plenary assembly of the court, in the presence of the 12 magistrates, which met urgently this evening, according to the court sources.
According to sources from the Court of Guarantees, the resolutions also cautions around a thousand political leaders, about sixty high-ranking officials of the Catalan government and the 947 mayors of Catalonia, about their duty to block or paralyse any initiative related to the organisation of the referendum, which will be communicated to the relevant people through the Spanish government's delegation to Catalonia. The petition was also made applicable to heads of the public Catalan media and the Mossos d'Esquadra (Catalan police force) like Josep Lluís Trapero and Pere Soler i Campins.