Calvo clarifies 155 not an option

The vice pres­i­dent of the Span­ish gov­ern­ment, Car­men Calvo, said yes­ter­day af­ter­noon that the ap­pli­ca­tion of ar­ti­cle 155 in Cat­alo­nia does not enter into the ex­ec­u­tive’s plans. Specif­i­cally, an­swer­ing the ques­tion upon her ar­rival at the Sen­ate of whether the con­tro­ver­sial ar­ti­cle is on the table, Calvo re­sponded with a la­conic “no”.

Calvo had al­ready ex­plained that 155 would be “the last mea­sure” to be em­ployed after the AP-7 was cut off by a Re­pub­li­can De­fence Com­mit­tee (Cata­lan acronym CDR) on Sat­ur­day and state­ments re­gard­ing the Sloven­ian path, al­though the spokesper­son of the PSOE elec­toral com­mit­tee , Es­ther Peña, said she had not closed the door on the op­tion and if it came to it would not think twice.

In the morn­ing, the sec­re­tary of the PSC, Miquel Iceta, had al­ready told TV3 that “there are no rea­sons” to apply 155, and ex­pressed his con­fi­dence in the Mossos (the Cata­lan po­lice), prais­ing their pro­fes­sion­al­ism. How­ever, he added it was the Cata­lan gov­ern­ment that he did not trust, be­cause of the “se­ries of de­c­la­ra­tions in re­cent days”. “We have seen the Cata­lan Pres­i­dent en­cour­ag­ing ac­tion (by the CDRs) and when they do it the po­lice de­cide not to act,” said Iceta, who be­lieves that after the in­ci­dents in Girona and Ter­rassa the Cata­lan gov­ern­ment “ad­vised the po­lit­i­cal heads” of the Mossos not to take ac­tion. How­ever, he ad­mit­ted that rather than send­ing po­lice to Cat­alo­nia, the so­lu­tion “is the Mossos being able to act calmly, free from po­lit­i­cal ob­sta­cles”.

In a sim­i­lar vein, PSC spokesper­son to Par­lia­ment Eva Grana­dos said that 155 “does not make any sense” and in­vited the lead­ers of the PP and C’s to read the Con­sti­tu­tion to see when it is ap­plic­a­ble, as “now is the time for di­a­logue”.