Rajoy dissolves parliament and calls December elections
Spanish PM sees difficulties in applying article 155 for medium or long-term occupation of Generalitat and Parliament and opts for immediate solution
When it was finally time to apply Article 155 of the Constitution on the final weekend of October, Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy made the surprise announcement that the measure would have the immediate outcome of elections rather than the anticipated and feared takeover of the Catalan government for renewable periods of six months.
After an extraordinary three-hour cabinet meeting following the proclamation of the Catalan Republic on Friday 27, Rajoy appeared at 8.15 in the evening to try and bring an end to Catalan self-determination. He announced the immediate dismissal of Carles Puigdemont, Oriol Junqueras and the rest of the Catalan government – including the director of the Catalan police force, the Mossos d’Esquadra, Pere Soler– and the dissolution of the Catalan Parliament, before calling regional elections for Thursday December 21.
“Catalonia needs to be reconciled with the truth, the law and itself, and the government does not wish to delay this task a minute longer,” Rajoy said. Those affected by the measures did not receive any personal notification, as is common practice, but rather were informed through the online Official State Bulletin (BOE, in Spanish). The Catalan General Secretary of the Interior was another of the dismissals, and the Spanish Minister of the Interior, Juan Ignacio Zoido, will now take charge of policing in Catalonia, as well as deciding on what to do about Mossos head Josep Lluís Trapero, accused of passivity during the October 1 referendum.
Return to normality
The foreign embassies set up by the Catalan government have also been closed, and the Diplocat board and the Advisory Council for National Transition, disolved. In spite of the general elimination of everything related to Catalan self-government, the Spanish prime minister insisted: “This is not about suspending, intervening or cutting self-government, but returning it to normal.” A different interpretation would be that in a territory where the People’s Party (PP) enjoys just 8.5% of the vote, a lack of social support does not guarantee a complicit network of allies on the ground, meaning central government can only count on the State’s power of coercion, symbolised by more than 5,000 National Police and Guardia Civil officers sent from all over Spain.
As for the original idea of censoring affairs to be debated in the Catalan Parliament for 30 days, the PP came across the issue of its possible unconstitutionality. Therefore, given the impossibility of implementing the full power allowed by article 155 on the streets of Catalonia, Rajoy’s solution is to make immediate use of the powers previously held by the president of the Catalan government and call elections on the earliest date permitted by law, which is within 54 days of the article coming into force, or December 21. It is a significant date for two reasons: firstly, it is the day after Puigdemont was thinking of calling elections, and at the same time it is much earlier than January 28, the date agreed with Alberto Rivera (Cs) and Carmen Calvo (PSOE), allowing Rajoy to show all sides who is calling the shots. “They will be free, clean and legal elections that can restore democracy,” Rajoy said, without clarifying whether he thinks that any elections have not been in the past.
For Puigdemont, the decrees reserved one last semantic punishment: if he wants to receive a salary as an ex-president, he must first request the status of ex-president, which would mean him accepting he is no longer president of Catalonia.