Catalan Government insists independence vote will take place in November

The Spokesperson for the Catalan Government and Minister for the Presidency, Francesc Homs, emphasised this Tuesday that “there is no deadline” to decide whether the self-determination consultation vote will take place, which is scheduled for the 9th of November but which has been temporarily suspended by the Constitutional Court. Furthermore, Homs stressed he is convinced that political unity around the 9^th of November vote among a two-third majority of the Catalan Parliament will be kept. In this vein, he denied any quarrel with the ERC, after he had talked about making decisions by mid-October. Homs said that the Catalan Government’s commitment is to make sure that Catalans can vote on the 9^th of November, avoiding “all the obstacles” put forward by the Spanish authorities, who are vetoing the non-binding consultation vote that aims to find out the citizens’ opinion about Catalonia’s political future.

Slowly and ambiguously, the Catalan Government is carrying out steps towards the 9^th of November’s self-determination consultation vote

Besides, the Catalan Government appointed the members of the 7 territorial electoral bodies that will supervise November’s vote, which were elected over the weekend by the independent Control Commission.

Those territorial sub-commissions as well as all the Catalan Government’s registers have also started to receive registration petitions from foreign-nationals for them to be able to vote on the 9th of November. The Catalan Government argued that they are legally obliged to receive such petitions, but they also acknowledged that “receiving is not the same than processing”, suggesting that the voter register for foreign nationals would not be set yet.

Therefore, Catalan authorities are using all the ambiguity and legal interpretations of the Constitutional Court’s temporary suspension of the consultation vote to carry on paving the road towards the 9th of November, although at a slower pace while carefully considering each step in order not to openly challenge Spain’s legality. Meanwhile, the Spanish Government insist that all those actions and secondary decisions cannot be adopted and are taking them to the Constitutional Court, which could or could not say anything about them this week.

Catalan leaders: Consultation vote will proceed (04.10.2014)

Constitutional Court temporarily suspends Catalonia’s self-determination consultation