Brussels/Madrid: Any attempt to stop Catalonia’s independence referendum will not quash secessionist feelings, the region’s foreign minister Raul Romevai Rueda warned three days ahead of the unauthorised vote.
The Catalan regional government is determined to go ahead with the ballot, while Spanish state authorities are out to stop it after it was banned by the Constitutional Court. Secessionist politicians have been threatened with arrest.
“If somebody believes that pretending, and I say pretending, to stop the referendum on October 1 will simply silence the democratic will of the Catalan society, I have to say that he’s wrong, totally wrong,” Romeva said on Thursday.
With tensions rising in Catalonia, regional leader Carles Puigdemont chaired a security meeting with representatives of the central government, while thousands of university students took to the streets in Barcelona for a pro-referendum march.
Catalan and Spanish police are under orders from a public prosecutor to guard schools to prevent them from being used as polling stations. Several thousand more officers are being deployed in Catalonia as part of an anti-referendum mobilisation.
Romeva, a former European Parliament member, spoke to journalists in Brussels after another leading Catalan politician, Barcelona Mayor Ada Colau, told the European Commission it could not be “passive” in the crisis.
Romeva confirmed that the Catalan parliament would declare independence within 48 hours if the ‘yes’ vote wins, and urged the EU to accept it. — dpa
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