Sacked Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont has called for “democratic opposition” to direct rule from Madrid.<\/p>\n
He condemned the suspension of Catalonia’s autonomy and promised to continue to “work to build a free country”.<\/p>\n
He made the call in a pre-recorded TV address to Catalans broadcast on Saturday afternoon.<\/p>\n
The Spanish government has stripped Catalonia of its autonomy and taken charge of its government.<\/p>\n
The measures came early on Saturday after the Catalan parliament voted to declare independence the previous day.<\/p>\n
Earlier, Spain’s interior ministry took charge of Catalonia’s police after firing senior Catalan police officials.<\/p>\n
Friday saw Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy announce the dissolution of the regional parliament and the removal of Mr Puigdemont as Catalan leader, and call snap regional elections.<\/p>\n
An\u00a0an official state bulletin\u00a0(in Spanish) handed control of Catalonia to Spain’s Deputy Prime Minister, Soraya Saenz de Santamaria.<\/p>\n
Demonstrations for and against independence went on into the night and a large rally “for the unity of Spain and the constitution” was held in Madrid on Saturday.<\/p>\n
In his TV address, Mr Puigdemont, describing the declaration of independence, said Friday had been “a day with democratic and civic sensibility”.<\/p>\n
He said the central government’s actions since then were “contrary to the expressed will of the citizens of our country, who know perfectly well that in a democracy it is parliaments that choose, or remove, presidents”.<\/p>\n
The Catalan government said that of the 43% of potential voters who took part, 90% were in favour of independence.<\/p>\n
–<\/p>\n
Source: BBC<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sacked Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont has called for “democratic opposition” to direct rule from Madrid. He condemned the suspension of Catalonia’s autonomy and promised to continue to “work to build a free country”. He made the call in a pre-recorded TV address to Catalans broadcast on Saturday afternoon. The Spanish government has stripped Catalonia of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"jnews_override_counter":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[107],"tags":[1738,111],"class_list":["post-366280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-international","tag-catalan-independence","tag-spain"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=366280"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366280\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=366280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=366280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/citifmonline.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=366280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}