The Catalan president, Carles Puigdemont, has informed the Spanish government that if it continues to “prevent dialogue and continue with repression”, the Catalan Parliament will proceed to “vote for the formal declaration of independence that it did not vote on 10th October”.
This warning was the conclusion in the letter that Puigdemont sent this morning to the head of the Spanish executive, Mariano Rajoy, in response to the request to revoke any declaration of independence before this Thursday morning.
The remark that the Catalan Parliament will proceed to approve a declaration “that it did not vote on 10th” can be interpreted as a recognition that on that day the Catalan Chamber did not declare independence, as was asked in the first request of the Spanish state, of which the deadline ended last Monday. This acknowledgment was the precondition that the State fixed to not activate article 155.
Despite everything, the Spanish government has already informed that on Saturday there will be an extraordinary cabinet meeting to activate the article with which the State intends to recover powers of the self-government of Catalonia. The executive of Puigdemont has met in an informal meeting at 9am this morning where the president communicated to board members the contents of the letter.
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In the letter, the president explains that the Catalan Parliament appraised the results of the referendum and that he “proposed to suspend the effects of that popular mandate”. He reiterated that he did it to propose dialogue demanded by numerous European authorities.
He regrets that neither the call for dialogue nor the request to revert the repression were met, and that in fact repression had increased with the arrests of the presidents of Omnium and the ANC. Despite everything, he reiterated that the suspension continued to be valid.
“That the only answer is the suspension of autonomy indicates that you are not aware of the problem, and that you do not want to talk,” he wrote.
Last week the president assured before the plenary of the Catalan Parliament that he assumed the results of 1st October and that the declaration of independence was left suspended. Later, all the deputies of JxSí (Together for Yes) signed the declaration in the auditorium of the Chamber. Initially, it was expected that this text would be read by the president in front of the Chamber, and the CUP (Popular Unity Candidacy) made its dissatisfaction evident in face of the change in the proclamation, which caused a delay of one hour in the celebration of the plenary session.