Referendum date and question to be announced on Friday

The Catalan president, Carles Puigdemont, and the Catalan Government’s vice-president, Oriol Junqueras, will announce the date and the question they have chosen for the Catalan referendum on Friday morning at the Government headquarters in Barcelona. According to different media outlets and subsequently confirmed by ACN, the Catalan president chose to publically announce the decision Friday after discussions with different representatives of the various pro-sovereignty and political groups.

The government will meet in an extraordinary session at 9:30am before the announcement. The most likely date seems October 1, although some sources also suggest the independence vote could be held the week after, on October 8.

According to sources close to the government, when announcing the date, the president and vice-president will be accompanied by the Government’s ministers and MPs from both the governing cross-party pro-independence ‘Junts Pel Sí’ and the radical left-wing party ‘CUP’.

As for the referendum question, some say it may ask citizens to choose whether or not they want Catalonia to become "an independent state in the form of a Republic". In fact, the parliamentary declaration approved on November 9, 2015 started the process toward “the creation of a Catalan State" and the transition law, which has not been officially published but has been partly leaked, defines Catalonia as a "legally constituted, democratic, socially responsible republic".

The Spanish government insisted that the referendum will not take place. The Spanish Vice President, Soraya Saénz de Santamaría, said that those favorable to this referendum "are not as numerous as they think". "Maybe they should take a break and think about this," she said.

The spokeswoman of the Catalan government, Neus Munté, urged the Spanish executive to "respect the social and political majority" in Catalonia in favor of the referendum. Munté said that what Catalans want to do "is a very simple thing: to vote in a referendum". The Catalan spokeswoman added that the Spanish government "still has time" to offer an answer to the Catalans’ aspirations. "That is what we would like," she admitted.