The verbal attacks from the Spanish government against the Catalan independence referendum are escalating, with only a month until 1st October. On Wednesday the Spanish deputy prime minister, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, said that Spain has its response to the "outrageous" law of Transitional Jurisprudence ready, and now this Friday she has said that "the democracy will act with all its weapons" to stop the referendum.
For the deputy prime minister, the Catalan Government "is clearly setting out a challenge to the model of coexistence and democracy", which she believes "deserves an answer from the all the institutions of the [Spanish] state that is to the level of the circumstances". To this end, she warned that "the day they sign what they will have signed", referring to the call for the vote, "it will be them leaving the democracy, and the democracy will act will all its weapons".
Santamaría was speaking during the PP (Popular Party) interparliamentary meeting in Valencia. During her remarks, she pointed out that the state "has the full force of the law" and, argued that anyone acting within the framework of the law "does not have to have any fear applying the law with everything meant by the strength of a democracy".
"We are talking about a group of gentlemen who have decided that for them democracy is something else, that for them democracy is that the media cannot express its opinions, that the civil servants have to put themselves at their service, that everyone has to dance to their turne," she said.
The PP politician noted that the referendum "is not officially declared at this time". She believes that this is because "it's easier to announce [one] than to sign [it]", but emphasised that the Spanish government hasn't been waiting for this moment to arrive. "From the first moment we have been taking decisions and measures. Since the [Catalan] Parliament gave the signal to start the [independence] process, the [Spanish] government has managed to cut back the different acts of the Catalan government," she said.
"We get to 1st September and they haven't convened the referendum, but the State of Law is demonstrating its strength so that this date does not materialise," she said. To support her point, she listed "the Constitutional Court banned any act to prepare the referendum, three months ago all the budgetary sections that could be used to pay for it were cancelled and 15 days ago the procedure to approve the referendum quickly was suspended" as well as the bans from public office in progress against "those who have taken decisions against the Constitutional Court, [Carme] Forcadell and her followers in the Board [of the Catalan Parliament]".