Former Madrid President Wants To Send in the Troops

Former president of the Autonomous Community of Madrid, Joaquín Leguina, said that the Civil Guard needs to be sent to Catalonia in order to stop the secessionist intentions of the Catalan government, adding that “just a handful of men would suffice.” Right after the approval of the Declaration of Sovereignty by the Catalan Parliament, Mr. Leguina, appearing on Spanish TV station 13TV,  said that “we need to bring the war to them. The joke has gone on long enough.” According to the Spanish politician, “neither Spain is stealing from Catalonia, nor it is guilty of any wrongdoing—neither Spain as a whole nor the government in the capital of Spain.”

Regarding Catalonia, he drew a comparison with the movies, “there is this movie called Shane where Alan Ladd’s character tells the bad guy ‘I wouldn’t try that if I were you’. Then he ends up killing the bad guy, but at least he warns him beforehand.”

Mr. Leguina went on saying that “the Spanish Republic was forced to send General Batet to explain this Companys character how things were supposed to be, right?”  Let’s recall that “this Companys character” he refers to was the President of the Second Catalan Republic, democratically elected by the Catalan people, handed over by Hitler's troops to the Spanish regime, who executed him. This makes President Companys the only democratically elected European president to ever have been executed.

Concerning Catalan president Artur Mas, he said that “you should not make fun of the symbols that represent Spain, you are not supposed to go against the figure of the king, you cannot remove the Spanish flag. It’s against the law—you have to obey the law.”