Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has announced that he intends to begin the imposition of direct rule over Catalonia on Saturday, as part of an emergency cabinet meeting. This is expected to include the revocation of the region’s historical autonomy.
This is the culmination of weeks of threats from Rajoy since the October 1 referendum in which Catalonia voted to secede from Spain. Catalan officials have signed a declaration of independence, but have delayed implementation, seeking talks.
Rajoy has ruled out talks, however, and is set to take the region over outright. The Socialist Party, Catalonia’s main opposition, says that they endorse the takeover and implementation of direct rule by Rajoy to stop secession.
The Socialist Party says they’ve received assurance that the Catalan parliament will be dissolved and new elections will be held in January. Given how many secessionists the Spanish government is threatening to arrest, the Socialists may not have a lot of rivals to run against by then.
How come NATO isn’t going to bomb Madrid like they bombed Belgrade, Serbia ?
Indeed Spain’s “Article 155” sounds like a point-by-point mirror image of Belgrade’s reimposing Federal rule over Kosovo.
One wonders how modern Europhiles manage to rationalize the EU membership of a state with such a constitutional provision given their smug self-righteousness on “human rights” and “democratic values”.
To be fair to the Spanish, they had by far the greatest anti-war demonstrations in the world during June of 1999 and their population overwhelmingly opposed that campaign and every subsequent Imperial intervention (along with Portugal & Italy – wonder if the decade of austerity might be in part payback for these countries record of dissent …).
Nevertheless now given the opportunity to demonstrate how a “western democracy” might deal differently with a peaceful & civil petition for change within their own jurisdictions, both Spain and the EU could only manage to reveal their sneering contempt for direct democracy and free will.
If this was 1776, this site would be linking to London newspapers and the official announcements that American Independence was illegal, that the Contintental Congress had been ordered not to meet and arrest warrants issued for its leaders.
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Meanwhile, 500,000 people are rallying in Barcelona, calling this a coup and comparing it to actions of the corporate friendly and corporate-news supported Franco fascist regime.