Spanish Vice President considers Puigdemont’s demand for a referendum ‘illegal and opportunistic’

Spain’s Government has reacted to Catalan President, Carles Puigdemont’s demand for a binding referendum in Catalonia. Spanish Vice President, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, said that she considered such a demand to be ‘illegal and opportunistic’ and linked it with the Government’s partnership with pro-independence radical left CUP. According to Sáenz de Santamaría, Puigdemont ‘is being forced to make certain decisions’ for CUP to support him in the upcoming vote of confidence he will submit to on the 28^th of September. In a similar sense, Spanish Minister for Justice, Rafael Catalá, stated that Puigdemont’s proposal to hold a referendum in Catalonia ‘exceeds the Spanish Constitution’. Acting Spanish President, Mariano Rajoy from the Conservative People’s Party (PP), didn’t comment on Puigdemont’s proposal, nor on the massive pro-independence rally that yesterday hit the streets of Catalonia.

Puigdemont is ‘tightening the rope because CUP is forcing him to make certain decisions in order to pass the vote of confidence that the President himself announced’, stated Sáenz de Santamaría. During a political meeting in the Basque Country, the Spanish Vice President assured this Monday that ‘the combination of radical opportunism and CUP’s populism deeply damages Catalan society and that of all Spaniards, since it is time for stability’. She also accused Puigdemont’s initiative to ‘make the society tense and suffer’ and considered it ‘absolutely unfair for the Catalans to put up with the fact that a vote of confidence involves such division, destruction and suffering’.

Spanish Minister for Justice: Puigdemont’s proposal ‘exceeds the Constitution’
Spanish Minister for Justice Catalá closed the door on Puigdemont’s call for a referendum in Catalonia to respond to the majority of the society’s demands. ‘Puigdemont can’t do whatever he likes; we are all under the rules of the game and especially the politicians’ he said and added that ‘it is not possible to move on in this direction’. Catalá warned Puigdemont that he ‘can’t change the rules for him’ and that his proposal ‘exceeds the Constitution’.

Regarding the pro-independence mobilisations that hit the streets of Catalonia this Sunday, Catalá admitted that there is ‘an important social reality’ behind this political aspiration, but emphasised that ‘in quantitative terms, there has not been any significant increase’ in comparison to previous occasions ‘rather it has been on the contrary’.