Catalan President Quim Torra threatened on Tuesday to withdraw his coalition’s parliamentary support for the Pedro Sánchez Socialist minority government.
“If there is no proposal for a vote on self-determination before November, the independence movement will not be able to guarantee Mr. Pedro Sánchez any stability in Congress,” Torra said according to the Catalan News Agency.
The Catalan leader referred to “prisoners and exiles” warning the patience of his government is “no endless,” calling on Sanchez to take specific commitments.
Torra leads a coalition made of the Esquerra and PDeCAT Parties that control 12 and 6 seats respectively in the 266-seat parliament. Spain will need to call new elections if Catalan parties favouring secession withdraw their confidence in the government.
Torra’s ultimatum gives the Spanish government a month to call an independence referendum for Catalonia or face a no-confidence vote. The deadline is November 2.
At the moment, the popularity of the Socialist Party is rising. The three latest opinion polls suggest that PSOE is the leading party with electoral influence between 24-to-26,5% share of the vote, compared to just over 22% in the general elections of 2016.
The Socialist Party favours enhanced autonomy but will not concede to a process that threatens the Spanish union. “We don’t accept ultimatums,” the government’s spokeswoman Isabel Celaá told the press.
Celaá reiterated that the Spanish government is willing to negotiate the deepening of self-government and called on the Catalan administration to avoid escalation.
Sánchez initiated a no-confidence motion against the government of Mariano Rajoy in Spring, succeeding in forming a minority government in June with the support of Basque and Catalan minority parties.