Catalonia rules out snap election amid threat of direct rule from Spain

Catalonia’s president has said he will not call a regional election that could have defused tension with Spain. Carles Puigdemont said he had considered calling a snap election, but was choosing not to because he had not received sufficient guarantees that the government’s “abusive” moves to take control of Catalonia would be suspended. In a hastily-called address from his palace in Barcelona and with the eyes of the world watching, the separatist leader said the regional parliament now will decide how to respond to the Spanish authorities’ takeover plan. The unprecedented measures are set to be approved on Friday in Madrid and will lead to the first direct intervention by central authorities in the affairs of one of the country’s 17 autonomous regions. Spain’s conservative government had offered to halt the extraordinary measures if a new election was to be called in Catalonia, but later backtracked. Mr Puigdemont also said it was now up to the Catalan parliament to move forward with a mandate to split from Spain following an independence referendum that took place earlier this month. Observers had been anticipating the possibility of an independence declaration all week, after Mr Puigdemont said there would be a session of the Catalan parliament on Thursday. But that threat was reduced to the prospect of a snap election by inside sources briefing the media on Wednesday. It now appears that Mr Puigdemont failed to win the assurances he wanted that Madrid would step back from imposing its will on the region if he called the election. The independence issue has led to Spain’s deepest political crisis in the four decades since the country restored democratic rule after General Francisco Franco’s dictatorship. Mr Puigdemont has said the referendum, which was outlawed by Spain’s constitutional court, gave him the mandate to declare independence, but he has stopped short of proclaiming a new republic, saying he wants to give the Spanish government a chance to negotiate. Those who voted were overwhelmingly in favour of independence, but less than half of eligible voters went to the polls. Madrid insists it cannot negotiate secession, and prime minister Mariano Rajoy is seeking to activate constitutional powers that will allow the government to take over control of much of the autonomous region’s affairs. The Spanish Senate is scheduled to approve the plan to trigger Article 155 of the constitution on Friday.