catalan government

The pressure radical left pro-independence CUP have put to meet with Catalan President, Carles Puigdemont, in order to tackle the vote of confidence he will submit himself to on the 28th of September hasn’t been well-received by the Catalan Government’s spokeswoman. According to Neus Muntéit is “inappropriate for CUP to set the pace and conditions of the vote of confidence” since “confidence is non-negotiable”. Muntémade this statement this Wednesday in an interview with RAC1 radio in relation to CUP’s demands to agree with President Puigdemont the next steps in the pro-independence roadmap before the vote of confidence and also before negotiating the budget bill for 2017. In this vein, Muntéaccused CUP of being responsible for the present ‘stand-by’ situation that the Catalan Government finds itself in, since the radical lefties refuse to pass the bill for 2016.

The Catalan Government Spokeswoman, Neus Munté warned this Tuesday that the “Spanish Constitution can’t be understood as a Criminal Code” and insisted on the Government’s commitment to “obey the democratic mandate of the 27-S Elections” and launch the pro-independence roadmap. She made these statements one day after the Spanish Constitutional Court (TC) decided to suspend Catalonia’s plan to disconnect from Spain and opened the door to applying criminal charges to the Parliament’s President, Carme Forcadell, for allowing the approval of the conclusions of the Committee to Study the Constitutive Process. According to Munté, the TC should be “a referee” in charge of settling “the constitutionality of the laws” rather than “an executor court”.

The Spanish Constitutional Court (TC) decision to suspend Catalonia’s roadmap towards independence, which was ratified last week by the Catalan Chamber, won’t stop the launching of the Constitutive Process of the Catalan Republic. This is what radical left pro-independence CUP stated this Monday. Moreover, Regarding the possibility that the TC may suspend the Parliament’s President, Carme Forcadell as well, CUP MP Anna Gabriel warned that this would represent “a point of no return”for the Spanish state and that this would require “a countrywide response”. “We will remain faithful to the Parliament and if we have to disobey we will do so”, stated pro-independence left wing ERC’s spokesman in the Spanish Parliament Joan Tardàand lamented the “authoritarian way”and the “judicial violence”used by the Spanish state.

The Catalan Democratic Party (PDC), the new political force which has emerged after former governing liberal Convergència decided to reinvent itself, won’t have its own parliamentary group in the Spanish Senate. This is the first time that the former Convergència party won’t have its own group in the High Chamber since democracy was restored in Spain, in 1977. The four members in the Senate’s Bureau from the Conservative People’s Party (PP) voted against the PDC’s proposal to add two senators from left-wing pro-independence ERC to their four, two from the Canarian Coalition (CC) and two from Basque nationalists Bildu, as the regulation foresees a minimum of 10 senators in order to have their own group. The Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) abstained from the vote and the other member in the Senate’s Bureau, representing the Basque Nationalist Party (PNB) voted in favour. 

The magistrates of the Spanish Constitutional Court (TC) held this Monday an emergency meeting and unanimously agreed to accept the appeal presented by Spain’s executive, which urged to suspend Catalonia’s pro-independence roadmap, the next steps of which were approved last week by the Parliament. By the end of August the TC will decide if it will apply prison charges to the Parliament’s President, Carme Forcadell. The 72 pro-independence MPs in the Catalan Chamber and the Catalan President, Carles Puigdemont, have expressed their solidarity with Forcadell and insisted that the decision to pass the conclusions of the Committee to Study the Constitutive Process was not hers but the democratic and majoritarian will of Catalans. 

Catalan Government Spokeswoman, Neus Munté responded this Friday to Spain’s decision to take the Parliament’s approval of the pro-independence roadmap before the Spanish Constitutional Court (TC). Munté considered it “unacceptable” that the Parliament’s President, Carme Forcadell, could be suspended and insisted that the Catalan executive “won’t move” from its “deeply democratic way”. She insisted that Catalonia’s roadmap towards independence “remains intact” and stated that “no court could be higher than the democratic will democratically expressed” in the 27-S Catalan elections. “It would be unprecedented that the president of Parliament could be suspended from office by a court decision”, she stated.

The Parliament finally accepted to include the conclusions of the Committee to Study the Constitutive Process, which established the next steps in the pro-independence process, in this Wednesday’s agenda. The decision comes amid controversy over the possible suspension by the Spanish Constitutional Court (TC), which claimed that the points agreed by the Committee emerged from the 9-N agreed proposal, which was declared unconstitutional. “We are not doing anything illegal” stated Catalan President, Carles Puigdemont, adding that he considered it “absolutely normal” for the Parliament to discuss the conclusions. In a similar vein, the pro-independence forces, governing cross-party list ‘Junts Pel Sí’ and radical left CUP stated that they are due to the democratic mandate which emerged from the 27-S elections.

Catalan President, Carles Puigdemont, accepted pro-independence radical left CUP’s demand to hold a meeting “in the coming days” in order to discuss Puigdemont’s approach to the vote of confidence. Indeed, the vote that the Catalan President will submit himself to in September is regarded differently by the two main pro-independence parties in the Parliament. While governing cross-party list ‘Junts Pel Sí’ considers voting in favour of Puigdemont’s presidency and backing the budget for 2017 “indivisible”, CUP understands that renewing the confidence in Puigdemont is part of the agreed pro-independence roadmap but not necessarily linked to the bill. The Catalan President extended the invitation to other political forces as well.

Catalan Government Spokeswoman, Neus Munté stressed the need for the Spanish parties to reach an agreement to guarantee the governability of the State and added that it would be “terrible” to call for General Elections again. Munté stated that the Spanish Government has been “inactive” for many months and warned that not taking decisions has consequences for all citizens. Munté’s statements come on the same day that current Spanish President, Mariano Rajoy, started his round of talks after the 26-J Spanish Elections. This Tuesday he met with Spanish Unionist ‘Ciutadans’, which came fourth in the last Elections and alternative left coalition ‘Unidos Podemos’, who were the third force in the Spanish Parliament.  

The independence process in Catalonia has awoken international interest. Proof of this is the friendship group with Catalonia that Swiss MPs from different parties will set up in the Federal Assembly. The Delegate of the Catalan Government to France and Switzerland, Martí Anglada, celebrated the “plural and transversal component” of the initiative, which goes beyond political ideologies. Anglada also emphasised the importance of a country “which is a point of reference in terms of democratic quality, direct democracy and international mediation tradition” showing its friendship toward the Catalan people “in the middle of the independence process”. Other countries, such as Estonia, have also set up friendship groups with Catalonia in their Parliament.

Radical left pro-independence CUP have formally asked Catalan President, Carles Puigdemont, to convene a summit at Catalan Government headquarters in order to agree on the terms of a unilateral referendum on independence. This is CUP’s preferred formula, since in view of the last Spanish Election results, they consider ultimately holding a referendum in Catalonia agreed with the Spanish State to be no longer possible. CUP has suggested inviting to this summit all groups which are for holding a referendum, meaning pro-independence cross-party list ‘Junts Pel Sí’, alternative left alliance ‘Catalunya Sí que es Pot’ and also alternative left ‘En Comú Podem’, which is not represented in the Catalan Parliament but won the recent Spanish Elections in Catalonia. According to CUP, the unilateral referendum on independence should be “binding” and take place within a year.

Catalan President, Carles Puigdemont, called for “leaving” Spain “as soon as possible” and stated that Catalans “not only have to make a change of state but also a change of era” since what is currently going on in Spain “is proper of another era, one in black and white”. Puigdemont accused current Spanish Minister for Home Affairs, Jorge Fernández Díaz, who is involved in a smear scandal against two Catalan pro-independence parties, of being “anti-system” and called for “leaving” Spain “as soon as possible”. “We can’t stay any longer in such a state” stated Puigdemont. “As a helpless democrat from Madrid who couldn’t change things once said: “Basques and Catalans, run away”. 

The possibility of holding a unilateral referendum on independence has not been rejected by the Catalan Government. According to Catalan Government Spokeswoman, Neus Munté, this option will be considered as long as it has “total democratic legitimacy” and “international homologation”. However, Munté emphasised that the roadmap towards independence, which foresaw an 18^-month term of office and constitutive elections afterwards, is still “in force”. “We don’t give up on the pro-independence roadmap but we are open, of course, to listening to all those options which would go in the same direction”, she stated. The possible celebration of a unilateral referendum on independence was first raised by radical left pro-independence CUP in the last weeks and it has been brought into the spotlight of the Spanish electoral campaign by several Catalan parties.

Catalan independence, and how to achieve it or stop it, was one of the main topics on the Spanish general electoral campaign trail on Friday in Catalonia. The candidates of the two parties of the governing ‘Junts pel Sí’ coalition, liberal Convergència (CDC) and left-wing Esquerra (ERC), presented different views on the idea of a unilateral referendum on independence, while ‘En Comú Podem’, the Catalan branch of ‘Unidos Podemos’, warned against organising, again, a non-consented consultation such as the one on the 9th of November 2014. “It wouldn’t be useful to call a unilateral referendum on independence if ‘no’ voters decide to boycott it”, said CDC candidate Francesc Homs, who is actually facing trial for helping to organise the 2014 consultation. Such a vote would be “worrying”, said Xavier Domènech, from ‘En Comú Podem’, who has always pointed out that his party, if victorious in the election, would call an official referendum. The candidate from ERC, Gabriel Rufián, stressed that they “will always support initiatives that give a voice to the citizens”.

The Catalan President, Carles Puigdemont, rebuffed on Thursday a request by the radical left-wing party CUP to “rebuild bridges” of trust after their veto of the 2016 draft budget bill. “The best bridges are those that you do not burn”, he said in a plenary session in the Catalan Parliament. The Catalan Government, led by the pro-independence coalition ‘Junts pel Sí’, expected the parliamentary support of the anti-capitalists following an agreement between the two parties in January that saw former Catalan President Artur Mas stepping aside and Puigdemont taking office. But CUP presented an amendment to the budget bill, the most important law of the parliamentary term, thus making it impossible for the Government to pass it. Following this, Puigdemont announced he will submit himself to a vote of confidence in September. CUP MP Mireia Boya said that the pro-independence forces should “rebuild bridges” from “today”, adding that the anti-capitalists feel “responsible but not guilty” for the current situation. Meanwhile, sources close to the Government suggested to the CNA that Puigdemont will use the summer to widen support for his government and depend less on CUP.