Spanish PM Pressured to Respond to Night of Catalan Chaos
Spanish Government Condemns Violent Protests in Catalonia
(Bloomberg) -- Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez is under pressure to restore order in Catalonia following a night of violence in cities across the region in the wake of jail sentences handed down to separatist leaders.
The authorities are prepared to take all necessary steps to guarantee public order after a night of rioting in Catalan cities coordinated by radical groups, the government said in a statement.
“The government has the resources to deal with the situation and take all necessary steps,” acting Public Works Minister Jose Luis Abalos said in a news conference on Wednesday. He called on party leaders not to seek any political advantage from the situation in Catalonia in the run-up to general elections next month.
Sanchez summoned party leaders to discuss last night’s events. After meeting him, Pablo Casado, the leader of the conservative opposition People’s Party, called on Sanchez for legal mechanisms that would take control of the Catalan police force from the separatist regional government.
“The state will have all our support for what it needs to do,” Casado said in a news conference. “We are acting as a loyal opposition and for that reason we request the measures that we consider are necessary.”
Protesters attacked government buildings in the cities of Tarragona, Girona and Lleida on Tuesday night while fierce clashes also took place in Barcelona, the government said. Catalan media showed images of confrontations between protesters and police that escalated in intensity while politicians appealed for calm.
The violence in Spain’s northeast is playing out against the backdrop of an election campaign that will call voters back to the polling booths on Nov. 10 for a fourth time in as many years. The scenes of fires and barricades on Barcelona’s streets raise the stakes for Sanchez as he comes under fire from political rivals to respond.
Shock Wave
“We’re still waiting to see the full impact from the shock wave from the sentences,” said Lluis Orriols, a political scientist at Carlos III University in Madrid. “Parties on the right are more comfortable in a scenario of confrontation than Sanchez.”
Spain has no plans for now to implement the national-security law as demanded by Casado, acting Interior Minister Fernando Grande-Marlaska told the Catalan broadcaster TV3.
The regional police force Mossos d’Esquadra is working effectively with the government and there’s no need to change the chains of command, Grande-Marlaska said. The law would give Sanchez greater powers to coordinate the operations of regional and national police forces in Catalonia.
On Monday, the Spanish Supreme Court handed down sentences totaling about 100 years to nine leaders of the separatist movement who tried to engineer a break from Spain in 2017. While the first day of protests centered on Barcelona’s airport, the clashes spread across Catalan cities on Tuesday evening as police issued warnings to stay away from trouble spots.
Pere Aragones, the vice president of the pro-secession Catalan government, appealed to protesters via Twitter to exercise restraint. He said protesters shouldn’t give the government an excuse to impose direct rule.
Fifty-four members of the Catalan regional police force had been injured and 18 members of one of the national police forces, the government said in a statement Wednesday morning. Protesters set up 157 barricades with open fires in Barcelona, it said.
The coming days could bring more flash points. Independence supporters on Wednesday began marches from Catalan cities to converge on Barcelona on Friday in time for a general strike.
In another sign of increased tensions, Spain’s soccer league asked the country’s soccer federation to move a match between Barcelona and Real Madrid slated for Oct. 26 to the Spanish capital because of security concerns, El Pais newspaper reported.
--With assistance from Charlie Devereux, Jeannette Neumann and Thomas Gualtieri.
To contact the reporter on this story: Charles Penty in Madrid at cpenty@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Chad Thomas at cthomas16@bloomberg.net, Richard Bravo, Jerrold Colten
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