The president of the unionist platform Catalan Civil Society (SCC), Josep Ramon Bosch, has warned of the risk of reimposing central government direct rule in Catalonia, via article 155. In statements to the COPE radio network this Saturday, Bosch explained that personally he would not reapply article 155 again in Catalonia. It would, he asserted, be a "huge mistake" because it would increase the "fire in the streets." "I think applying 155 just for the sake of it would be one of the biggest errors the state could make, because it would be putting more gasoline on the fire," he said.
The view expressed by the president of the SCC, a group set up to oppose Catalan independence, is distinctly at odds with the current discourse of Spain's three parties of the right - the PP, Ciudadanos and Vox - who have all recently advocated the re-imposition, probably under stronger terms, of the constitutional article which was first applied in Catalonia in late 2017 through the votes of the PP, Ciudadanos and the Socialists.
Josep Ramon Bosch said that applying 155, coinciding with the independence trial, "would be an international scandal that wouldn't be easy to explain." "The state has no capacity to manage Catalan resources administratively," he said. In addition, he stated that there is currently no "rupture with legality" in Catalonia because the Catalan government is complying with the constitution. The implication he makes is that there are no grounds for implementing article 155.
On the other hand, interviewed by COPE, the SCC leader also strongly criticized the imprisoned pro-independence leader Oriol Junqueras, who he accused of being "incendiary, supremacist and racist" in texts which Bosch says the jailed politician wrote in the past on the subject of a supposed Catalan ethnicity. "He wants to lead Catalonia to a scenario like that of Kosovo or Yugoslavia," he warned.
Regarding the independence trial, he affirmed that it would be "just" and "evidence-based" because the judge Manuel Marchena "has an exceptional record" as well as international recognition. He also criticized Catalan public broadcaster TV3 for "continuing to talk day and night about prisons, political prisoners or the anti-democratic state."