Spain Won’t Arrest Separatist Leaders, Blames “Fake News” For Catalan Crisis
Following Catalan President Puigdemont’s address yesterday accusing Madrid of “the worst attack since Franco,” the Spanish government has urged Catalonians to accept direct control from Madrid and ignore seditious instructions from the pro-independence leaders.
Spanish Foreign Minister Alfonso Dastis responded on Sunday with the call to obey Madrid.
“We are going to establish the authorities who are going to rule the day-to-day affairs of Catalonia according to the Catalan laws and norms … I hope everyone will disregard whatever instructions they will be planning to give because they will not have the legal authority to do that.”
“All the government is trying to do, and reluctantly, is to reinstate the legal order, to restore the constitution but also the Catalan rules and proceed from there,” Dastis told BBC TV.
“We are not going to arrest anyone.”
Of course, Dastis could not help himself but fall back on the establishment’s ‘excuse du jour’ for anything that does not fit with the maintenance of the status quo… “There has been a lot of alternative facts and fake news”
Below are details of the powers the Spanish government plans to assume for a maximum six months before regional elections are held as set out in a proposal to the upper house Senate. As Reuters reports, the measures were formulated under a constitutional provision never before invoked in Spain’s 40 years of democracy.
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