“Despite the threats, we continue working,” says Puigdemont

The dismissed Catalan president Carles Puigdemont took to Twitter on Wednesday afternoon to recall that exactly one month has passed since the day of the day of October 1 referendum, which saw almost 1000 people being injured at the hands of the Spanish police.

“Despite the violence, and past and present threats, we continue to work,” he said via the social media platform just one day before he is due to appear before Spain’s Supreme Court faced with charges of rebellion, sedition, and embezzlement of funds.

Puigdemont, alongside other members of his dissolved government face up to 30 years in prison. Paul Bekaert, Puigdemont’s Belgian lawyer, has made it clear that Puigdemont will not be going to Madrid, proposing, instead, that he be questioned from Brussels.

Consolidation of a republic

Meanwhile, the ousted vice-president Oriol Junqueras has defended the Catalan Republic in an article he wrote for the New York Times entitled ‘Catalonia will not retreat’.

“With the referendum’s passing vote, the Catalan Republic was born, and it is supported by the legitimacy of the ballot boxes,” wrote Junqueras in the opinion piece published on Wednesday. He called on people to consolidate the Catalan Republic once more at the ballot boxes on December 21, when the forced snap elections will take place, stating that voting should never be renounced as a means of declaring an independent state.

“In spite of the obstacles being placed in our way, we must move forward. We must never give up the vote as a means of validating the republic, and we must prepare future local elections that will be essential to the consolidation of this republic,” he wrote in the American newspaper.

He called Madrid’s application of Article 155 an “attack,” that permitted the Spanish government to usurp institutions, allowing “Madrid to take administrative control of Catalonia,” mentioning the outcry these extreme measures have caused.