Catalonia, there is more and more an air of secession. The pro-independence majority of the Catalan Parliament has in fact given the green light (72 votes in favor, 63 against) to the resolution which marks the start of the process of breaking up national unity, bringing the head-on confrontation with the central government in Madrid closer.
Separatists call her “deconnexió democràtica”, something that is equivalent to progressively pulling the plug, through the rapid approval of new local laws that serve to create the structures of a new sovereign country. Even at the cost of disobeying the legislative norms of the Spanish state, at the Constitution passed by the Cortes in 1978, and to the sentences of the Constitutional Court which in the motion is explicitly indicated as "delegitimized and without competence" due to the 2010 sentence which rejected a part of the regional statute already subjected to a referendum, unleashing secessionist anger.
It is precisely the Constitutional Court that Prime Minister Marian Rajoy will in all likelihood cling to in order to repel the Catalan assault. “We will use the full force of law and democracy”, said the Prime Minister in his first institutional declaration in response to the challenge. The Council of Ministers will meet on Wednesday in extraordinary session to study all the necessary countermeasures.
The Parliament's vote, welcomed with choruses in favor of independence by hundreds of demonstrators gathered in front of the headquarters of the Parc de la Ciutadella in Barcelona, nonetheless marks the most serious challenge to the institutions recorded in Spain after the attempted coup by Lieutenant Colonel Tejero of February 23, 1981. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, who has been insisting for days on the need for a "firm but proportionate" response, has already ready an appeal to the Constitutional Court which in the next few days should declare the parliamentary resolution null and void.
