Mariano Rajoy has staged a 'coup d'etat' against democracy in Catalonia

​The Spanish government has suspended Catalonia’s self-rule, 78 years after Franco’s fascists did the same. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy has decided he doesn’t like the democratically elected government of Catalonia and has announced he will replace its members with his own ministers.

He has also decided to prevent the Catalan parliament from choosing a new president, to validate all the legislative initiatives it may table in the future and to call for a snap Catalan election in the coming months. According to several high-ranking People’s Party officials, pro-independence parties could be banned in the run-up to the vote, or just after it.

Rajoy has also announced that his cabinet will have full control of the Catalan government’s finances (it already has it) and seize control of the Catalan public broadcasting service (TV, radio and news agency). This is how he plans to change the political will of Catalan citizens: by abusing the most basic democratic principles, the rule of law and the due respect for his fellow citizens.

Rajoy, the politician who irresponsibly started a Spain-wide campaign against the new agreement on Catalonia’s home rule 10 years ago, has now taken a step that no other Spanish politician dared to take in a democracy, not even during the worst times of the Basque violent conflict.

By suspending Catalonia’s home rule, the Spanish government, with the incredible support of the Socialist Party, has destroyed one of the basic consensuses that led to democracy in the late 1970s: the recovery of Catalonia’s self-rule. By doing so, Rajoy has staged a coup d’état against Catalonia’s institutions and against democracy in the whole of Spain.

It is more than evident that this is an escalation, without precedent, of tensions and will provoke hundreds of thousands of Catalan citizens to take to the streets to defend Catalonia’s home rule and institutions, as already happened yesterday.

At: http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/catalonia-catalan-spain-independence-referendum-coup-against-democracy-a8013661.html
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Rajoy has gone as far as to threaten Catalonia's leadership with "the safe fate that befell Lluís Companys" - the 1930s pro-independence leader seized by the Nazis and executed by their close ally Franco.