Catalonia wants out; Spain says no

Spain's King Felipe VI used his traditional Christmas Eve speech on Sunday to call on Catalonia's leaders not to make a new independence bid, as the region makes tentative plans to recover its suspended autonomy following Thursday's election.

In a televised address, the Spanish monarch admitted that 2017 for Spain had been "a difficult year." But he called on Catalonia's leaders to "face the problem that affects all Catalans, respecting their diversity and thinking responsibly in the common good."

Spain on Tuesday began to pull the police reinforcements it had sent to Catalonia ahead of a contested independence referendum in the region on October 1, the government said.

Officers from Spain's National Police and Guardia Civil forces sent to the northeastern region at the end of September "will be gradually withdrawn until Saturday", a spokesman for the interior ministry said, adding the withdrawal had started Tuesday.

The spokesman did not say how many officers were deployed, but top-selling daily newspaper El Pais put the figure at around 10,000.

A satirical petition proposing that Tabarnia, a non-existent part of independence-minded Catalonia, should break away from the region and remain part of Spain went viral on Tuesday.
The Change.org petition, which has gathered over 21,000 signatures in just three days, was a trending topic on Twitter with over 150,000 users of the social media platform discussing it, including Catalan politicians.

Its backers mirror the language of Catalan separatists to argue that Tabarnia -- a word formed from Barcelona and Tarragona, the names of Catalonia's two main cities on the Mediterranean coast -- "is a region that differs in many aspects from the rest of the region it belongs to."

Spain’s supreme court has refused to grant bail to the ousted Catalan vice-president, Oriol Junqueras, who has been in prison for more than two months over his role in the region’s unilateral push for independence.

On Friday afternoon, three judges ruled that Junqueras would remain in custody on the grounds that he could seek to carry on with the secessionist struggle if released.

In a written ruling, they also said there were indications to suggest he had committed the offences on suspicion of which he is being held: sedition, rebellion and misuse of public funds.
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“We’re still in a situation of complete uncertainty, in which unfortunately political and judicial matters are getting mixed up, since Spain’s judiciary will have a very strong influence on the political outcome,” said Pablo Simón, a professor of politics at the Carlos III University in Madrid.
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While the separatists narrowly kept their parliamentary majority, their numbers might not add up, because eight of their 70 elected lawmakers are either in jail in Madrid or in Belgium alongside Mr. Puigdemont, refusing to return to Spain and risk prosecution.
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The Catalan Parliament will reconvene on Jan. 17, according to Mr. Rajoy’s schedule, and then vote on a new government. It’s uncertain who will be seated in the hemicycle, and whether the ineligible separatists will try to pass their seats to substitute candidates.
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The smallest of the separatist parties — the far-left Popular Unity Candidacy — is adamant that Catalonia can break away from Spain unilaterally, which could divide it from other parties that have been more cagey about their plans.

“What happens next for the independence movement depends on several unknowns, but perhaps mostly on Puigdemont, a leader whose main trait has become his complete unpredictability,” said Josep Ramoneda, a political columnist.

After the flight to Belgium, Mr. Ramoneda said, Mr. Puigdemont “can talk as much as he wants about his legitimacy, but he’s also trying to get out of a very difficult personal situation.” He described Mr. Puigdemont’s efforts to force Mr. Rajoy into a negotiated settlement as “pure fantasy.”

The Catalan election may in fact have left Mr. Rajoy with less freedom to maneuver, because his Popular Party came last. Instead, the biggest single vote-getter was another unionist party, Ciudadanos, on whose support in Madrid Mr. Rajoy’s own minority government depends.

Unless the separatists succumb to their internal tensions and legal problems, that victory will only make Ciudadanos the main opposition in Catalonia. But it does give the party an opportunity to raise the pressure on Mr. Rajoy, and strengthens its claim to take charge in the conflict as the flag bearer for Spanish sovereignty.

“The only thing that now keeps Rajoy in office is not his own strength but the weakness of those who oppose him,” Mr. Ramoneda said.

While the politicians bicker, Spanish judges are showing no sign of softening their stance toward the Catalan separatists, even if that could help break the political deadlock.

Spanish legal experts have defended the prosecution of the separatists for civil disobedience, but have disagreed over whether the charges could include rebellion, which carries a maximum prison sentence of 30 years.
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The main separatist parties of Catalonia have reached a preliminary agreement to re-elect Carles Puigdemont as leader of the restive Spanish region, even as he remains in self-imposed exile in Belgium, the Catalan news media reported on Wednesday.

The deal — reached over dinner in Brussels on Tuesday — would allow Mr. Puigdemont to deliver his acceptance speech this month either by videoconference from Belgium or by having another lawmaker read it in the Catalan Parliament on his behalf, according to the Catalan radio station Rac1 and other outlets.
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In order to guarantee a separatist majority in a parliamentary vote this month, Mr. Junqueras and the other jailed separatists are expected to ask for special permission from Spain’s judiciary to travel to Barcelona for one day to cast their votes. Some of the lawmakers in Belgium could appoint substitutes to take their seats.

The preliminary deal to re-elect Mr. Puigdemont was struck just hours after his predecessor, Artur Mas, resigned as leader of his own conservative party. Mr. Mas was barred last year from holding public office after Spain’s judiciary ruled that he had organized an illegal vote on Catalan independence in 2014. “This new stage requires new leaders,” Mr. Mas told a news conference on Tuesday.

The video was condemned by the Federation of Spanish Jewish Communities as senseless and counterproductive.

“The deceitful use of photos and images relating to the second world war makes no sense and undermines the credibility of the message,” it said in a statement. The federation also said it supported - and would always support - Spanish law and the constitution.

A source close to Puigdemont said: “He wasn’t making any comparison between Franco and Hitler and [Rajoy’s] People’s party. All he was doing was sharing the video and saying that it was impressive because it showed the power of the [Catalan] people on 1 October.”

The source added that Puigdemont had always been firmly against attempts to play down the horrors of Nazism. Puigdemont’s former government has previously compared the Spanish authorities to authoritarian regimes in North Korean, China and Turkey.

Spain's federal prosecutor's office on Sunday said former Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont should be arrested if he travels to Denmark for a scheduled university debate about the breakaway region and democracy in Europe.

The prosecutor's office said it would have a Supreme Court judge "immediately" issue an arrest warrant for Puigdemont.

Spanish prosecutors ask court to reactivate international warrant as he flies to Denmark

Spanish prosecutors have asked the country’s supreme court to reactivate the international arrest warrant for Carles Puigdemont after the deposed Catalan president flew to Denmark from Belgium. He has been living in Brussels for the past three months following the regional parliament’s unilateral declaration of independence.

Puigdemont, who fled to Brussels at the end of October after being sacked by the Spanish government, is facing possible charges of rebellion, sedition and misuse of public funds over his role in the push to split from Spain. He faces arrest the moment he sets foot on Spanish soil.

Early on Monday morning, the ousted leader flew to Copenhagen to take part in a conference on Catalonia.

Spanish prosecutors had warned they would seek to renew the international arrest warrant that a judge had dropped in December because of a discrepancy between Belgian and Spanish law that would limit the charges under which Puigdemont could be extradited and therefore be charged with on his return.

Puigdemont is trying to return as Catalonia’s president after December’s snap election, in which pro-independence parties retained their majority in the regional parliament.

He hopes to be sworn in via videolink or by using one of his MPs to read his candidate speech when the regional parliament begins a debate to choose its new leader at the end of January.

However, the Spanish prime minister, Mariano Rajoy, has said Puigdemont must attend the investiture debates in person.

“It’s absurd that someone may intend to be a candidate to be the head of the regional government while being in Brussels and running away from justice,” Rajoy said last week.

“This is no longer just a judicial and political problem. This a problem of pure common sense.”

The Spanish government assumed control of Catalonia on 27 October after Puigdemont’s government held an illegal referendum and the Catalan parliament unilaterally declared independence, plunging Spain into its worst political crisis since its return to democracy four decades ago.

MADRID/COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Catalonia’s parliament nominated former leader Carles Puigdemont, sacked by Spain for unilaterally declaring independence, as candidate to rule the region again in a sign of defiance to Madrid and Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s government.

Puigdemont and his supporters say he can rule from self-imposed exile in Belgium, where he fled to in October to avoid arrest for his part in organizing a banned referendum on a split from Spain and the consequent declaration of independence.

Madrid has rejected this possibility and said it will challenge any attempt by him to rule remotely in the courts.

Puigdemont said on Monday the independence movement would not bow to Spanish authority in comments during a debate held in the University of Copenhagen.

“We will not surrender to authoritarianism,” Puigdemont said at the event, which marked his first trip away from Belgium in three months.

Puigdemont became the top candidate to lead the wealthy northeastern region again after elections in Catalonia last month gave secessionists a slim majority.

The 55-year old former journalist potentially faces decades of jail in Spain if he is convicted of the charges leveled against him, including rebellion and sedition, for organizing the referendum and declaring Catalonia’s independence.

Rajoy and his ministers have said they would appeal to the courts and maintain Madrid’s direct rule of Catalonia if Puigdemont was elected while abroad.

However, the Catalan parliament’s speaker said Puigdemont was the only candidate chosen by parliament to rule the region.