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EDITOR IN CHIEF- ABDULLAH BIN SALIM AL SHUEILI

A test of loyalty

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Angus Berwick and Sonya Dowsett -


With the Spanish government ready to take over the running of Catalonia on Friday, the loyalty of the local police to Madrid or to the Catalan cause will be tested if they are ordered to drag their former political masters from office.


Spanish police provoked international outcry by using batons and rubber bullets when they stepped in to try to stop an illegal independence referendum on October 1 after the local Catalan force refused to prevent voting in what has become the worst constitutional crisis in modern Spanish history.


Catalonia’s secessionist government is intent on resisting Spain’s plan to remove it from power, and there are doubts over how a divided and demoralised Mossos d’Esquadra, as the Catalan police are called, would respond if ordered to evict President Carles Puigdemont and his autonomous government by force.


National police could once again be on the front line.


The local police force is riven by distrust between those for and against Catalan independence and is estranged from Spain’s national police forces, according to interviews with Mossos officers and national police. The Civil Guard gave evidence against the Mossos chief in a sedition inquiry after his force stood back and allowed voting to take place, court documents show.


Five Mossos officers, speaking on condition of anonymity, said they believed the 17,000-strong force was split among those who wanted independence and those who opposed it, with three of those saying they would not use force to remove ministers and lawmakers from power.


“I’m not going to use force and beat people with my baton if they are passive,” said a 15-year Mossos veteran and secessionist, who declined to be named.


He said many others felt the same, but added: “I would have to obey it. My family has to eat.”


A Mossos spokeswoman said the force was neutral and not subject to any “political or ideological criteria”.


Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is intent on thwarting the latest bid for independence by Catalonia, which has 16 per cent of the Spanish population but generates 19 per cent of the country’s economic output, to avoid what he believes will bring economic and social turmoil to the heart of the euro zone.


Officers said there was also an anti-independence faction in the Mossos d’Esquadra, “Lads’ Squad” in Catalan, which uses an encrypted chat app to share views on independence versus


allegiance to Madrid. — Reuters


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