The Spanish government will "immediately" react to any attempt to invest the head of the Junts per Catalunya election list, Carles Puigdemont, as president at a distance, to avoid him being president of Catalonia from Brussels. That was the announcement made by the central government's spokesperson, Íñigo Méndez de Vigo, in a press conference after today's cabinet meeting. He guaranteed that any attempt would be appealed "without hesitation". As a result, Spanish government sources say that article 155 would remain in force, and not be lifted.
De Vigo publicly justified this evoking the "embarrassing days" in the Catalan Parliament with the approval of the laws of disconnection, saying they shouldn't be repeated with an investiture at a distance. "It's a fallacy, an impossible ambition", said the spokesperson, demanding a return to normality. "You cannot be 2000km [1200 miles] away and president. It's not serious. Would the 'control sessions' also be done at a distance?" the sources repeated. They insisted that the government would use all the means at their disposal to stop infringements or reinterpretations of the rules.
Members of the governing PP party's leadership were already positioning themselves similarly some days ago in an informal conversation with El Nacional: they believed that a new attempt to bend the law would be to remain "outside of the law", so article 155 would remain in force. This came after the party announced they would appeal any such action. "It's surreal, like everything they've done recently. It's absurd, a way of laughing at the public. If he doesn't come it's because he doesn't want he, he's simply fled", said PP's general coordinator, Fernando Martínez Maíllo.
Facing this scenario, De Vigo suggested that the next head of the Catalan executive should have no open legal proceedings. "Puigdemont is a fugitive from Spanish justice, and Catalonia has to start worrying about its own problems, not his personal ones", he said about Puigdemont travelling to Belgium to avoid being arrested and imprisoned like other members of his government. What's more, the spokesperson urged Puigdemont to follow the example of the Parliament's speaker, Carme Forcadell, who retracted her support for the unilateral path to independence in testimony to the Supreme Court and this week declined to act as speaker again in the new legislature.
The Spanish government is starting to suggest Puigdemont is the only obstacle to the return of normality. "Slowly and inexorably the application of article 155 is becoming visible, there's no possibility of carrying out politics outside of the law, sooner or later the weight of reality falls: [minister] Carles Mundó has left politics, Carme Forcadell doesn't want to be speaker, Neus Lloveras is leaving the Association of Municipalities [for Independence], Jordi Sànchez recognises that the 1st October referendum was illegal," boasted De Vigo.