Catalonian president attacks Spanish king for 'ignoring his people' after independence vote

Catalan premier Carles Puigdemont has firmly rebuked King Felipe of Spain for “ignoring the millions of Catalans who don’t think like him” following the royal’s thundering criticisms of the region’s pro-independence movement.

In a prime-time television speech, seemingly designed to mirror King Felipe’s address to the Spanish nation by scheduling it exactly 24 hours afterwards, Mr. Puigdemont argued that King Felipe’s speech had seen the monarch abandon his traditionally neutral stance in politics. Instead, he claimed, the King was following the anti-Catalan nationalist policies of Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy.

King Felipe’s speech strongly accused the nationalists of undermining the Spanish constitution and intentionally breaking the law in their latest independence bid. Mr Puigdemont criticised the King both for echoing the government’s views and for failing to refer to the hundreds of injured during heavy-handed police actions against a illegal pro-independence referendum in Catalonia over the weekend.

“This isn’t the right way,” Mr Puigdemont, standing next to a Catalan flag in stone-flagged Barcelona government palace buildings, said in his nine-minute speech. “With this attitude you have disappointed many Catalans who held you in esteem. The constitution gives you a role as a moderator which you have failed to use.”

With Spain’s worst constitutional crisis in decades deepening daily, for the Spanish monarchy to comment directly and at length on a political event in or outside the country is almost unprecedented. Mr Puigdemont’s extended public response to the King’s comments is almost equally unusual in the country’s political circles.

The Catalan Premier’s sternly expressed criticisms of King Felipe contrasted sharply with his praise for those elements of the Spanish population who, Mr. Puigdemont said, had expressed their support for the region in the last few days.

Switching briefly from Catalan to Spanish, Mr. Puigdemont said “I am grateful to the many people who have supported the Catalan people in their quest for their rights.”

Although Mr Puigdemont underlined the Catalonian government’s repeated requests for negotiations to resolve the ongoing standoff with Spain, he was seemingly careful not to use the word independence even once during his speech. However, the Catalan leader did promise that the overwhelmingly pro-secession result of the banned referendum, expected to be endorsed by Catalonia’s parliament early next week, would be respected.

Barely a quarter of an hour after Mr. Puigdemont had completed his speech, Spain’s deputy Prime Minister, Soraya Saenz de Santamaria, had already accused the Catalan leader of lacking in respect for state institutions. “Every statement he makes is another step on the road to nowhere,” she insisted, “outside the law there is no democracy.”

“The president of Catalonia has caused an unprecedented division amongst its people and he has done so by acting against the King, against Europe and against those Catalans who felt the King’s message last night was comforting.”

Spain’s other mainstream party, the Socialists, were almost equally damning in their criticisms of Mr. Puigdemont’s speech, with one top figure, Jose Luis Albalos, saying “He spoke in a measured way, but his actions are anything but measured.”

“He should have promised to abide by the [Spanish] constitution and started negotiating from that point onwards.”

“The King was expressing himself in his role as the symbol of the unity and stability of the state.”