Parallel government in Brussels would be ‘absurd,’ says Rajoy

Spanish president Mariano Rajoy qualified the agreement between pro-independence parties to have a parallel government for Catalonia acting from Brussels as “absurd.” In the same interview with Spanish Telecinco broadcaster, he additionally warned that the swearing in the second in line in Puigdemont’s party Junts per Catalunya (JxCat), Jordi Sànchez, would be a “great mistake.”

Rajoy expressed that the Catalan parliament should appoint “a person who’s in Spain, that isn’t in prison and that doesn’t have problems with the law” as president. He then added that said person should “follow the law;” if they don’t, he warned, they will have problems with the Spanish judiciary, and that “the rest is just a joke.”

The candidates and the law

Today is a telling time for Rajoy to be giving his opinion about candidates for a Catalan presidency. Indeed, this is the second plenary for the Catalan parliament after the Spanish executive implemented Article 155 to seize Catalonia’s self-government, a measure which, to be lifted, required a new government to be formed following the December 21 snap elections that Rajoy had also called.