Catalan separatists yesterday threatened “mass civil disobedience” against the Spanish government if it fulfils its vow to depose the region’s secessionist leader to stifle his drive for independence.
Firefighters, teachers and students weighed into the dispute, warning of strikes and protests, at the start of a crucial week in Spain’s deepest political crisis in decades.
Madrid has said it will suspend the powers of the semi-autonomous region, where separatist leaders held a banned independence referendum on Oct. 1.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Catalonia’s separatist parties announced they would hold a full session on Thursday to decide their response.
That could be an opportunity for the region to follow through on threats to declare unilateral independence from Spain, a prospect that has raised fears of unrest.
The Spanish Senate is set to suspend the territory’s limited self-rule in a meeting expected on Friday.
Photo: EPA-EFE
Spanish Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria said Catalan President Carles Puigdemont will be out of a job as soon as this weekend.
“He will no longer be able to sign anything, he will no longer be able to take decisions, he will no longer receive a salary,” Saenz de Santamaria told radio Onda Cero.
The far-left Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP), which backs Puigdemont’s coalition, said Madrid’s post-referendum clampdown was the “biggest assault” against the Catalan people since the dictatorship of Francisco Franco.
“This assault will receive a response in the form of massive civil disobedience,” the CUP, a key regional power broker, said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Lluis Corominas, spokesman of the Together for Yes ruling coalition, urged a “peaceful and democratic defense of Catalan institutions.”
He branded the Spanish response to the independence drive “a case of unprecedented institutional violence.”
Catalan firefighters hinted they may offer resistance in the dispute by refusing to obey orders from national authorities.
“It depends on what they ask us to do. If there is a road that is blocked and they send us to unblock it, maybe we won’t go,” said a spokesman for a firefighter association associated to the separatist movement.
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