Spanish Prime Minister takes Catalonia's reform to court

PanARMENIAN.Net - At the last press conference before the Spanish government heads off on vacation, Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy announced on Friday, July 28 that his government would lodge legal action with the Spanish Constitutional Court against Catalonia's latest bid to lay out a path to independence from the rest of Spain, Deutsche Welle reports.

Rajoy's announcement addressed a procedural reform that lawmakers in Catalonia had approved on Wednesday that would allow the region's government to fast-track its approval of laws of secession without debate and within a single day. The head of government and his advisers believe that Spain's top court will find the proposed reform unconstitutional for violating the right to political participation.

The proposed reform lacks "the most elemental democratic guarantees," Rajoy said, making it a clear violation of both the Spanish Constitution and the region's Statute of Autonomy, which outlines the areas of self-governance that are independent from Madrid.

The autonomous institutions of Catalonia and the bureaucrats who serve them "cannot be used to deliver an action that blatantly contradicts law," Rajoy added.

The prime minister from the conservative People's Party and his government adamantly oppose the Catalan secessionist movement, which wants the semi-autonomous region in Spain's northeast to split off from the rest of Spain and become its own sovereign state.