Mariano Rajoy has presented an appeal against a change to Catalan legislation which would allow Carles Puigdemont to be invested president from abroad. The measure was approved in an extraordinary cabinet meeting this Wednesday at 11am in the Moncloa government palace. The Spanish government also asks the Constitutional Court to prevent bodies of the Catalan government from meeting abroad, or "by means of telecommunications". Thirdly, they are appealing against the measure having been passed in a single reading in the Parliament.
The immediate effect would be that convening an investiture debate for Puigdemont could mean a charge of disobedience for the Parliament's governing Bureau and its speaker, Roger Torrent, as government spokesperson Íñigo Méndez de Vigo warned in the press conference after today's cabinet meeting. "The attempt is to prevent any [crimes of ] evasion", he said. Rajoy and his government have presented more than 25 appeals relating to the Catalan independence process. If the court accepts to consider the appeals, the law will be automatically suspended in accordance with article 161.2 of the Spanish Constitution.
It wasn't expected that the decision would be communicated through a press conference, but given the growing tension with the leader of Ciudadanos, Albert Rivera, in the Congress this morning, the government called the media for 1pm. Rivera had announced that his support for the central government's intervention in Catalonia was suspended, in response to which De Vigo called for "loyalty, responsibility and maturity" from Ciudadanos, as well as asking them to maintain the investiture agreement between their two parties for "stability", the economic recovery and to guarantee the continuity of "the state's policies".
The Moncloa has entered its appeal around 1:45 pm today, hours after the law was published in the Catalan government's gazette. The central government is acting with the support of the Council of State and following a warning about the law from the Catalan Council of Statutory Guarantees. Their objective is to knock down "certain precepts", De Vigo said, so that no candidate for president can defend their manifesto without being present in the chamber, something they will work towards "with all the legal means at hand".