Spain PM Rajoy urges Catalonia to form 'viable' government
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has again urged leaders of Catalonia to form a new administration that could function and be viable, hinting that his government in Madrid may reject a future regional cabinet that includes jailed leaders of an outlawed independence movement.
“Catalonia needs a viable government not an unviable government,” said Rajoy on Monday, urging Catalan leaders to stick to Spanish laws, which he described as “the rules of the game.”
Rajoy’s remarks, which came during a business forum in the northwestern city of Vigo, were his first since new Catalan President Quim Torra named his cabinet on Saturday that included ministers from a previous administration that had been sacked by Rajoy in October. Two ministers in the new cabinet are jailed in Madrid awaiting trial and two are in self-imposed exile in Belgium.
Torra traveled to Madrid on Monday to visit jailed Catalan politicians, including Jordi Turull and Josep Rull, who have been named in his cabinet.
“In no European Union nation would these prisoners be in preventative detention for the crimes they are accused of,” said Torra after he visited the two former ministers at Estremera jail near Madrid.
Torra became Catalonia’s new president after the regional chamber failed in its successive bids to re-appoint Carles Puigdemont, the former president who is now in Germany fighting an extradition to Spain.
Puigdemont himself picked Torra, a fierce secessionist, to follow in his footsteps to advance Catalonia’s independence cause.
Torra has vowed to build on the results of a banned referendum on independence last October, which saw more than 90 percent of the region’s half of eligible voters endorse its separation from Spain. Puigdemont made his controversial declaration of independence based on the results of that vote, a move that prompted Madrid to impose direct rule and forced Puigdemont into self-exile.
Madrid has slammed Torra for naming a cabinet that includes banned figures, saying it is a “new provocation." That would mean a continued rule of Spanish authorities in Catalonia as the regional administration should gain the approval of the central government to assume office.
Protests have been called for later on Monday against Rajoy’s continued application of article 155 of the constitution, which he first invoked in October to sack Catalonia’s government.
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