Spanish government aims to challenge the new independence vote

Spanish Nationalist government activates the mechanism to appeal to the Constitutional Court, again 

The Spanish government has activated the mechanism to challenge the new independence vote scheduled on November 9 in the Spanish Constitutional Court. The vote is replacing the original non-binding referendum vote that has already been banned by the Spanish authorities.

Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy yesterday asked the Council of State’s opinion, the prior step to contest the Government of Catalonia set of actions to carry out the vote. Rajoy has called for an urgent opinion so that the council of ministers can finally decide to challenge it by the end of this week.

On Friday, the Spanish Deputy Prime Minister, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, already announced that it had asked its legal services to analyse all the aspects of Catalonia’s independence vote. Sáenz also stated that Mas is pretending to replace ‘an illegal process for one that is even more antidemocratic’. On top of this, the Spanish PM, Mariano Rajoy, stated that if Catalonia carries on with the alternative non-binding referendum / survey vote, scheduled on the 9th of November, it will mean that ‘it is not a healthy democracy’, since ‘it does not respect the rule of law’.

The suspension of the originary vote

The Constitutional Court accepted on October 10 to file the two Spanish Government’s appeals against the originary self-determination vote decree and the Catalan Parliament’s law upon which it was based. This decision automatically represented the temporary suspension of the law and the decree.