Rajoy finally takes Catalonia's alternative and non-binding vote on independence to Constitutional Court

Barcelona (ACN).- Early afternoon on Friday, the Spanish Government filed the appeal to the Constitutional Court against the alternative participatory process that the Catalan Government is organising for the 9^th of November. It did so the day after the State Council – its main advisory body – issued a non-binding recommendation to do so, upon the request from the Spanish Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy. Two weeks ago, the Spanish Government had been hesitating about whether to present such an appeal or to tolerate Catalonia's alternative vote. However, in the last few days, the parties and civil society organisations supporting self-determination have put aside their quarrels and backed the new participatory process scheduled on November 9. After pro-self-determination forces agreed to work for the "success" of the alternative participatory process and after the corruption scandals mostly affecting the governing People's Party (PP), the Spanish Government decided to appeal against it. Besides, on Friday, the Catalan Executive's Centre for Opinion Studies published a poll indicating that 49.4% of Catalans would vote for independence and 32.3% would vote against it.

According to the Spanish Deputy Prime Minister, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, the appeal's objective is to avoid "an abuse of the legal framework" and "to protect democracy" from the "perversion" represented by the Catalan participatory process, as she said on Friday after the weekly Cabinet meeting. In addition, the appeal also aims "to protect civil servants", emphasised the Deputy PM. Furthermore, she considered that the President of the Catalan Government, Artur Mas, "is taking another step outside of the Constitution" and that he "wants to violate the rights of citizens". "The consultation vote has been organised without a legal base and without the basic legal guarantees", she added. Sáenz de Santamaría underlined that the State Council was considering the alternative vote to be worse than the original consultation vote, since it does not have a pre-made census and it is run by volunteers.

The Constitutional Court is likely to suspend the vote on Tuesday

This time, the Constitutional Court has not rushed to accept the Spanish Government's appeal, as it did on the 29^th of September, and it is likely to do so on Tuesday 4th of November, in its next scheduled plenary. Such a rush damaged separation of powers in Spain. If the Court accepts the appeal, as it is expected, the participatory process would be automatically suspended, until a final decision is reached, which can take months or years.