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“Threat to coexistence”

Within 24 hours, Rajoy responds to Puigdemont letter that a referendum is impossible; “It’s not the response we were hoping for,” says Catalan President

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy did not even wait 24 hours before sending a letter in response to Catalan President Carles Puigdemont’s final request for talks on a referendum. Prior to packing his bags and travelling to Brussels to attend the NATO summit yesterday, Rajoy replied that it is impossible to hold the referendum in Spain and the mere fact that it is now being considered poses a “serious threat to peaceful coexistence and the Constitution”.

Rajoy’s letter also reiterated that the Catalan President must come before the Spanish Congress to defend his roadmap and face certain defeat with the accumulated votes of the PP, PSOE and Ciutadans. “It’s not the response we were hoping for and does not serve to resolve the dispute,” reflected Puigdemont.

Although the response is much quicker than that received by then President Artur Mas in 2013, who had to wait forty-five days for a reply from La Moncloa, Rajoy’s letter does not contain the slightest shift in his position. In just two pages, the Spanish PM made it clear that there is no room to negotiate a referendum, killing off any possibility of exploring Puigdemont’s offer to open “negotiations on the terms and conditions” of the referendum.

Although the language used by Rajoy is more measured than that he employed on Monday at the headquarters of the PP and in Tuesday’s session in the Senate, where he referred to the process in Catalonia as “an abuse of authority” and compared it to “the worst of dictatorships”, the letter does refer to the Catalans’ peaceful and democratic process as posing a “serious threat” to Spain.

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