A meeting of Seville's city council has passed a motion proposed by the Popular Party calling to reimpose direct Spanish government rule over Catalonia via article 155 of the constitution “with the breadth and duration that is necessary”. The same motion calls for the defence of “national symbols and parliamentary monarchy” as well as of the Spanish language as “the vehicular and common language in all the autonomous communities”.
The proposal was passed with support from both the PP and Ciudadanos, and against, the Participa and Izquierda Unida groups. The surprise was the positioning of the PSOE - the Spanish Socialist party that governs nationally - which abstained.
One of the PSOE's Seville councillors, Carmen Castreño, commented that her party "supports the idea of bearing the Spanish flag proudly”, but she asserted that the motion "hides" the PP's wish to "impose article 155 in Catalonia”. According to Castreño, this is not the right way to make progress towards “dialogue or harmony”. She also recalled that a decade ago, when former PSOE prime minister Jose Luis Rodríguez Zapatero governed, 15% of Catalans supported the independence movement, but under the PP's Mariano Rajoy this figure rose to 40%.