Albert Rivera, leader of the unionist Citizens (Cs) party, has called for the Spanish Government to take an even tougher approach in its offensive against the independence movement, accusing Mariano Rajoy's Popular Party-led administration of being soft.
Rivera did not hesitate to demand that treasury minister Cristóbal Montoro explain whether Spain's Autonomous Liquidity Fund (FLA) - which provides loans to regional governments - was used to pay for the Catalan independence referendum held on October 1st last year, and he believes that, if this claim is indeed correct, somebody needs to take the blame. "An autonomous state is a decentralized state, not a joke. It is necessary to take back control", said Rivera to an audience at his party's Winter Campus youth event, referring to the resolution announced by a Barcelona judge investigating the preparations for the referendum.
In this resolution, the judge considered it "evident" that "all or part" of the referendum was paid for with loans obtained through the FLA. Rivera expressed surprise that the Spanish Government did not control these credits down to the last euro and that the Catalan administration was able to "pick the pocket" of Spaniards in order to carry out what he called "a coup d'état".
It was outrageous, said Rivera, that the state did not have control over the money it lent to Catalonia and that the leadership of Catalonia's Mossos d'Esquadra police, "handpicked" by president Carles Puigdemont, was working in opposition to the Spanish security forces, the Civil Guard and the National Police Spanish, he added.
"Are we still allowing textbooks to lie" or "permitting Spanish tuition in Catalonia to be limited to two hours as week"?, asked Rivera, insisting that Spain had to take Catalan nationalism "very seriously".
He also attacked the PP and the Spanish Socialists (PSOE) for not having changed the electoral law in all these years, which, in his view, prevented his party's candidate, Inés Arrimadas, from being able to form a Catalan government even though Cs was the single most-voted party.