Spain’s central government said on Thursday it would suspend Catalonia’s autonomy and impose direct rule after the region’s leader threatened to go ahead with a formal declaration of independence if Madrid refused to hold talks. The Socialist opposition said they backed the government but suggested the measures should be limited in scope and time. Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, ignoring a 10am deadline to drop his secession campaign, threatened Rajoy with a formal declaration of independence in the Catalan parliament. Puigdemont has already defied Rajoy once this week, when he ignored a first deadline to drop the independence campaign and instead called for talks. Rajoy says the Catalan government has repeatedly broken the law, including when it held a banned vote on independence on October 1 and made a symbolic declaration of independence on October 10, only to suspend it seconds later.

Source: Dhaka Tribune October 19, 2017 10:41 UTC