16 Oct, 2017 @ 13:05
1 min read

NUCLEAR OPTION: Madrid to impose direct rule on Catalonia if it announces independence in new Thursday deadline

peinado puigdemont e
Carles Puigdemont

THE Spanish government has given Catalonia three days to declare whether it will seek independence or not.

Madrid had given a deadline of 10:00 a.m. today for an official response from the region, hoping to receive a clearer indication on whether it had declared independence.

However a letter from Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont at 8.00 am failed to offer any confirmation.

Spain’s Deputy Prime Minister Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría said he had not made his position clear and that Madrid would give him until Thursday morning to give a formal confirmation.

“It’s not a hard question we have asked, it’s not a hard question to respond to,” she said.

“10:00 a.m. (local time) on Thursday is the deadline,” she added. “We are very disappointed he hasn’t given a yes or no answer to the question we asked.”

“He is prolonging the situation,” she said.

Rajoy is expected to publish a response to Puigdemont’s letter today.

The letter from Catalonia this morning only supported the offer by Puigdemont to meet Rajoy to discuss the situation, and asked that dialogue take place over the next couple of months.

Rajoy has said he would be ready to invoke Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution if a declaration of independence is announced on Thursday.

The so-called nuclear option would allow him to fire the regional government and call for fresh elections.

The chances of this happening are still relatively high, according to analysts.

“If the Catalan government chooses a hard line, we expect that Article 155 will be triggered. While it is difficult to predict the exact contours of its implementation, we foresee that in due time a new regional election will be called in an attempt to restore the normal institutional set up,” JPMorgan economist Marco Protopapa said last week.

Laurence Dollimore

Laurence Dollimore is a Spanish-speaking, NCTJ-trained journalist with almost a decade’s worth of experience.
The London native has a BA in International Relations from the University of Leeds and and an MA in the same subject from Queen Mary University London.
He earned his gold star diploma in multimedia journalism at the prestigious News Associates in London in 2016, before immediately joining the Olive Press at their offices on the Costa del Sol.
After a five-year stint, Laurence returned to the UK to work as a senior reporter at the Mail Online, where he remained for two years before coming back to the Olive Press as Digital Editor in 2023.
He continues to work for the biggest newspapers in the UK, who hire him to investigate and report on stories in Spain.
These include the Daily Mail, Telegraph, Mail Online, Mail on Sunday and The Sun and Sun Online.
He has broken world exclusives on everything from the Madeleine McCann case to the anti-tourism movement in Tenerife.

GOT A STORY? Contact newsdesk@theolivepress.es or call +34 951 273 575 Twitter: @olivepress

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