Clock ticking for Puigdemont as allies call for independence

Bloomberg

Secessionist allies piled pressure on Catalan President Carles Puigdemont to formally declare independence from Spain as a deadline looms for him to clarify his stance or face being stripped of his powers by the central government in Madrid.
CUP, a radical party that’s part of Puigdemont’s pro-independence coalition in the Catalan parliament, published a letter saying that the only way to protect democracy and civil rights would be to proclaim a republic. The Catalan National Assembly, a separatist civic group that organizes street protests, also called on him to go ahead with a declaration of independence.
The clock is ticking in Catalonia toward an October 16 deadline set by Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy that risks triggering the suspension of self-rule from Barcelona. Rajoy, who reviewed the troops at a military parade in Madrid on Thursday to mark Spain’s national day, is turning the screws on Puigdemont as he tries to hold his coalition together in the face of threatened legal reprisals for challenging the country’s constitutional order.
“We have a very serious problem facing us which is a coup d’etat against democracy,” Rafael Hernando, the head of Rajoy’s People’s Party group in parliament, said in an interview with TV channel Antena 3
Friday. “The state has many resources to confront this challenge so that no one carves up Spain.”
Hernando said he “wasn’t very optimistic” about Puigdemont’s response because he has already taken the region to a state of confrontation that had resulted in more than 400 firms being “expelled” to other parts of Spain.
In a speech to the Catalan parliament
on October 10, Puigdemont claimed the right to declare independence but stepped back from putting it into effect as he called for dialogue. Rajoy responded the next
day by demanding that the Catalan president clarify his position on the inde-
pendence declaration or face a possible suspension of the region’s autonomy
beginning October 19.