Rajoy "to fight the battle of defending the many millions of citizens who feel Catalan, Spanish and European"

Barcelona (ACN).- The Spanish Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, has stated that Catalonia's upcoming elections are Spain's "main risk" to the State itself and to the country’s economic recovery. Rajoy read a speech before the press before departing for his summer break, and Catalonia's independence was one of the main issues he talked about. The Spanish PM stressed that the government he heads "will never allow secession to happen"; "by no means will there be independence", he emphasised. He also stressed that the Spanish Government is ready "to fight the battle of defending the many millions of citizens who feel Catalan, Spanish and European". However, despite Rajoy’s words and according to Article 11 of the Spanish Constitution, no Spanish national can have his or her nationality withdrawn and any Spanish citizen can become a national of any Ibero-American country – a concept that includes Catalonia – without losing their Spanish nationality and without the need for a special treaty to be signed between the two countries.

Rajoy said he is satisfied with the strategy he has been employing during the last few years, based on a total rejection of even talking about the organisation of a mutually-agreed vote like the one that took place in Scotland. According to him, his approach was "cautious and proportional". "We have not made any concession", he added, "nothing". According to him, any Spanish PM would have acted in the same way, as "it is not easy to hold a dialogue with somebody who wants to organise a referendum", he said.

Rajoy has no regrets

The Spanish PM was also asked about the appeal that the party he leads, the People's Party (PP), filed to the Constitutional Court in 2006 against Catalonia's Statute of Autonomy, which had just been approved by the Spanish Parliament and the Catalan people through a binding referendum. In 2010, after a long and extremely controversial process in which the Constitutional Court lost a great deal of prestige, the Catalan Statute was significantly trimmed, and some essential elements were left out. This was a clear turning point in relations between Spain and Catalonia, and many Catalans started to support independence, convinced that Spanish nationalism would never fully accept Catalonia's nationhood status and transform Spain into a truly pluri-national state. On Friday, Rajoy said he does not regret anything related to those events, not even when his party raised millions of citizen signatures against Catalonia's main law.