Spanish Education minister and government spokesperson, Íñigo Méndez de Vigo, has today said that the central executive will not consent to reforming the Catalan Parliament's rules to allow Carles Puigdemont to be invested as president of Catalonia without being present in the chamber in person.
In an interview with Spanish TV station Antena 3, Méndez de Vigo responded to the reform suggested by Junts per Catalunya as a way to try and give legal cover to Puigdemont being nominated president without being in the Parliament. "It cannot be. The Spanish government, which by exercising [article] 155 has all these functions, won't consent to it," he said.
In his opinion, independence supporters should have learnt they can't do certain things, like violating the Constitution or Catalonia's Statute of Autonomy and "playing at unilaterality". "To go and do their own thing again and fraudulently modify a law to allow this gentleman a status, I seems to me that it's terrible news."
De Vigo noted that Puigdemont is accused of very serious crimes and has "fled from justice", saying that Catalan politics cannot depend on his destiny. "Catalonia has to recover normality," argued the government spokesperson.