The president of the Catalan government granted an interview to VilaWeb on Friday
Pere Cardús i Vicent Partal
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| Picture by Jordi Carreño / VilaWeb |
The president of the Catalan government, Artur Mas, granted an interview to VilaWeb on Friday, minutes after the Spanish government announced it would challenge the 9 November independence consultation vote before the Constitutional Court. President Mas said he would do everything in his power to ensure that the vote takes place as planned. According to the president, the Spanish government has made a fool of itself with this challenge.
'I am certain that we are ready to vote in this participatory process. We would have probably preferred to be able to vote another way.'
VilaWeb asked Mas to explain the current situation in English: ‘The best way to explain what is happening in our nation, Catalonia, is to try to show the world that we have the will and commitment to vote and to decide our political future. This is what we are trying to accomplish. The big problem is that in order to do so, we need both an open dialogue with key Spanish government institutions as well as the ability to reach agreements. We tried to accomplish both, but the outcome demonstrates that this is very difficult to achieve in Spain. That is why we are resorting to different methods to reach our ultimate goal, which is to vote and decide our political future as a nation and as a country’.
Regarding the vote scheduled for 9 November, Mas stated: ‘I am certain that we are ready to vote in this participatory process. We would have probably preferred to be able to vote another way. Our first attempt some months ago was to try to convince the Spanish government to transfer the power to hold a referendum. This was not possible at the time, approximately six months ago. We tried to hold a non-binding consultation, which was also blocked by the central government. Now we are trying to channel the political views of the Catalan people through a participatory process with the same goal: to learn the opinion of the Catalan population about the political future of the nation. We have done everything in our hand to hold a vote on 9 November; we are prepared to move forward with it. I hope we will be able to’.
Asked whether he was concerned about the state of Spain’s democracy, Mas responded: ‘We are seeing the central government trying to strike down every process geared toward expressing our opinion as a nation. We have fought very hard for many years to consolidate a real and quality democracy in Spain. But now we are realizing that although we have a democratic system in Spain, it is not a high-quality democratic system, as can be surmised from the constant blocking of the Catalan people’s attempt to express their opinion on the political future of our nation’.
Related info:
Artur Mas: ‘The Spanish government has crossed the threshold of the ridiculous’
http://english.vilaweb.cat/politics/artur-mas-i-am-concerned-that-spain-is-not-a-quality-democratic-system
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