Rajoy “ready” to face unilateral declaration of independence, which would be “a frontal attack on the law”

Barcelona (ACN).- The Spanish Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, stated on Tuesday that a unilateral declaration of independence in Catalonia in the event that pro-independence parties obtain an absolute majority in September’s Catalan elections would be “a frontal attack on the law”, “which has no precedent in democratic and civilised countries”. The day after the pro-independence unitary list presented its road map for the months after the Catalan elections, which are to be transformed into a ‘de facto’ plebiscite on independence, Rajoy repeated that he is “ready” to face “any problem” and insisted that he “will not allow” a unilateral declaration of independence to happen. He asked for “calm” and insisted that the next Catalan elections “are only about electing an Autonomous Community parliament”. In the presence of Algeria’s Prime Minister, Abdelmalek Sellal, 2 of the 3 questions addressed to Rajoy by the press were about Catalonia’s independence.

In Madrid, Mariano Rajoy stated in a serious tone that the government he chairs is “absolutely calm” and “ready” to face any problem deriving from the Catalan elections, scheduled for the 27^th of September. The pro-independence parties, many of them uniting under a shared candidature, aim to transform the electoral call into a ‘de facto’ referendum on independence, as they say it is the only way left to hold a legal self-determination vote after the Spanish Government unilaterally blocked any discussion on the issue and decided to ignore the democratic mandate that resulted from the last Catalan elections in 2012.

Back then, 80% of the newly-elected Parliament supported the organisation of a legal self-determination referendum in a campaign that was mostly about this issue. In addition, the elections had been called in advance, in response to the first massive pro-independence demonstration organised by civil society on Catalonia’s National Day that year (the 11^th of September 2012), when 1.5 million Catalans peacefully marched behind the banner ‘Catalonia, new European state’.

“No Spaniard will have taken away his right to decide about how his country should be”, said Rajoy, who has repeated on many occasions that Catalans cannot hold a self-determination vote in Catalonia as sovereignty belongs to all Spaniards as a whole. “In the event that somebody makes unilateral declarations on issues that go against the law”, the Spanish Government will act to make sure the Constitution is respected.

However, if Rajoy has to act in Catalonia, there will not be any “frontal clash”, but only “the implementation of the law”. “Everything is possible within the law and nothing is possible out of the law”, said Rajoy, because “out of the law we are facing the cancellation of the rules of trust and the breaking up of the rules of the game”, he added.

The Spanish PM said that, within this framework, the Catalan President can call parliamentary elections if he thinks it appropriate, but “he cannot break the law”, stated Rajoy. The Spanish Prime Minister asked “all Spanish” and citizens who feel Spanish in Catalonia “to keep calm” because “they will never lose their condition of [being] Catalan, Spanish and European”.

“The national sovereignty will not be broken and there will not be independence”, he said before regretting “the irresponsibility of some”, who are adopting “an inappropriate decision” in a country like Spain, which “has a future that is in the European Union”. “And of course I want Catalonia to be in the European Union and not out of it”, he emphasised. He also added that he is “always in favour of stability” and “providing people with certainties”. And therefore, “nobody will oblige Catalans to have to choose between being Catalan or Spanish”, he added.

“I am in favour of our history, of the union and not of division, and I am against the people who are aiming to break what has been united for centuries, who do not care about the real problems of citizens, and who have generated a division that has not been remembered in Catalonia in years”, Rajoy concluded.