Former Spanish foreign minister José Manuel García-Margallo has warned this Thursday that the Spanish state "will not withdraw peacefully" from Catalonia. During a debate on Catalan radio show El Matí de Catalunya Ràdio, the journalist Mònica Terribas asked him for his opinion about the charges of rebellion brought against politicians and social leaders involved in last year's referendum.
Margallo said that, like judge Pablo Llarena, he believes that a crime of rebellion was committed in Catalonia. "I believe that what we saw in the streets during the search of the [Catalan] economy ministry was violent", he said, adding that "unilateral secession cannot be achieved by any other path than violence".
The former minister said he made this "hypothetical" claim on the impossibility of peaceful independence for two reasons. Firstly, because "the Constitution doesn't allow secession and, as such, there'll be no agreed-upon referendum". Secondly, because, in his opinion, "the Spanish state won't withdraw peacefully" from Catalonia. "It won't hand over the keys to the offices and lower the flag," he said.
"If it cannot be through an agreement and it cannot be by unilateral abandonment, then it will have to be by means of violence. And that, necessarily, leads to rebellion," he said. According to Margallo, at it's heart, "the type of rebellion doesn't matter, what we're debating is what's happening in Catalonia with independence of the way that this attempt at unilateral secession would bring about".