Catalonia’s ousted leader Carles Puigdemont agreed Tuesday to a snap election called by Spain’s central government when it took control of the region to stop it breaking away, but he said the fight for independence would go on.

Below are several scenarios of what could happen in the next few days.

Courts

Puigdemont and his sacked cabinet have been ordered to testify before the Spanish High Court on Thursday and Friday after charges of rebellion, sedition and breach of trust were filed against them.

Under Spain’s legal system, a judge will then decide whether Puigdemont should go to jail pending an investigation that can sometimes take up to several years — and a potential trial.

Puigdemont traveled to Brussels after the Catalan regional parliament issued a unilateral declaration of independence on Friday, and it was not immediately clear whether he would heed the call to appear before the court.

He had said earlier Tuesday he would return to Spain only when given unspecified “guarantees” by the Spanish government.

The same charges have been drawn up against the Catalan parliament’s speaker, Carme Forcadell, and other senior lawmakers but, given they have parliamentary immunity, they will testify before the Supreme Court, which is in charge of handling cases relating to lawmakers or members of the government.

Prosecutors have asked the courts to order Catalan secessionist leaders to deposit 6.2 million euros to cover potential liabilities but they have not sought preventive jail against them.

This could change, however, if Puigdemont and his associates did not show up at the High Court as the judge could deem them to be a flight risk and jail them.

Elections

It is not clear whether a snap regional election will resolve the crisis.

Two recent opinion polls showed support for independence may have started to wane.

But an official regional survey published Tuesday showed some 48.7 percent of Catalans believe the region should be independent, up from 41.1 percent in June and the highest since December 2014.

Based on 1,338 interviews, the Centre d’Estudis d’Opinio poll was the first survey released since the independence declaration though the bulk of it was taken before then, between Oct. 16 and Oct. 29.

Other opinion polls have also shown Catalonia is almost evenly split between pro- and anti-independence supporters.

One key thing to watch will be if pro-independence parties run on a joint ticket or on separate platforms. If they ran separately, they could find it more difficult to reach a parliamentary majority.

They must say whether they intend to run together before Nov. 7, and then put forward their candidates by Nov. 18.

Direct rule

Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy sacked Catalonia’s government — including Puigdemont and his deputy Oriol Junqueras — and assumed direct control over the region. Central government ministries assumed the powers of the Catalan administration until a regional election takes place on Dec. 21.

That unprecedented step was implemented smoothly and calls for civil disobedience were widely disregarded.
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A top Ukrainian official says Russia should provide U.S. investigators with access to former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who fled to Russia after his rule was toppled in Ukraine’s Maidan revolution of 2014.

Dmitry Shymkiv, the deputy head of the administration of President Petro Poroshenko, said access to Yanukovych could prove vital to an understanding of the work done for Ukraine by indicted former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

Shymkiv, whose role is similar to that of deputy chief of staff in the United States, spoke to VOA in response to comments made Tuesday by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who said Washington should further investigate Ukrainian links to Manafort.

Kyiv “has information” about the 2016 U.S. presidential election, Lavrov told a news briefing, according to reports by Russian news outlet RIA.

U.S. investigators probing Russian efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. election — which Moscow denies having made — charged Manafort and a business associate on Monday with conspiracy to launder money and other crimes. The charges, some going back more than a decade, center on Manafort’s work in Ukraine, specifically for Yanukovych’s pro-Russian Party of Regions.

Yanukovych, who fled to Crimea just before it was annexed by Russian forces in February 2014, was not seen again until he held a news conference three weeks later in Rostov-on-Don, Russia.

Ukrainian TV channel TSN has reported that Yanukovych lives in the Rostov region, although Russian officials have never confirmed this.

“We need to understand … how all of the [ties between Manafort and top Ukrainian officials] took place,” said Shymkiv, secretary of the National Reform Council to the president of Ukraine and deputy head of Poroshenko’s administration.

Russia, however, has not cooperated with a Ukrainian government arrest warrant for Yanukovych, who stands accused of the “mass murder of peaceful citizens” during the uprising against his administration. Similarly, Shymkiv suggested in a Skype interview with VOA’s Ukrainian service, Russian officials would be unlikely to accommodate a U.S. request for Yanukovych to testify in the Manafort trial.

“I believe Yanukovych should be interrogated by the U.S. government, but I don’t think the Russians would let the Americans do that,” he said, laughing. “But it is absolutely a valid claim, because Yanukovych was the leader of Ukraine’s oligarchical structure, the leader of the corrupted vertical that was built in Ukraine since his rise to power in 2012 and up to the 2013 revolution of dignity.”

Watch: Ukraine, Russia urge US to expand Manafort probe

In his remarks Monday, Lavrov suggested that the charges over Manafort’s work for Ukraine indicated that the U.S. investigators had so far been unable to make a case against Russia, which has been the main focus of the probe headed by special counsel Robert Mueller.

“He has been working for several months. Accused two former Trump campaign managers of what they were doing on behalf of Yanukovych. Even though they were looking for a Russian trace,” Lavrov said, according to the Russian news outlet Sputnik International.

Lavrov also hinted at a Ukrainian role in last year’s U.S. presidential election, saying Ukrainian officials “can say a lot about their position toward the candidates during the 2016 presidential campaign.”

Shymkiv said U.S. investigators should explore whether Manafort was connected to the confiscation of revenue from some Ukrainian businesses while he was serving as a consultant to Yanukovych’s party.

“There was very aggressive behavior toward Ukrainian business people, and there was a strong extraction of money from different industries, so [Yanukovych] should be interrogated in this case, or at least be a subject of the case, because Paul Manafort was hired by the Party of Regions, which represented Mr. Yanukovych,” said Shymkiv.

Ukraine focus on lobbying

Asked for his reaction to the Manafort indictment, Shymkiv, who is tasked with overseeing post-Maidan reforms under Poroshenko’s administration, said that while U.S. news coverage has been dominated by the money-laundering and tax-evasion charges, Ukrainians are focused on U.S.-based lobbying groups in the employ of various Ukrainian politicians.

“[The Manafort trial] puts a significant light on a lot of lobbying activities in the U.S. from international governments or some political forces,” he said. “We’ve seen many Ukrainian politicians hiring lobbyists for different activities — creating, for example, fake hearings in the Congress.

“We appreciate American journalists who investigated it and showed how fake it is. But it is important that through the interrogation of Manafort by U.S. law enforcement agencies, we might get some additional insight into corruption practices, or other similar activities, which were happening in Ukraine during the Yanukovych regime,” Shymkiv added. “This can help Ukrainian law enforcement agencies build stronger cases on convicting some Ukrainian individuals.”

Ukrainian prosecutors, he noted, are willing to remain in touch with U.S. Justice Department officials.

“As this Manafort case evolves, there will be more stories and more disclosures taking place,” he said.

Manafort, who served as Trump’s campaign manager for about two months in the summer of 2016, was forced to resign after reports surfaced about his financial relationship with Yanukovych.

This story originated in VOA’s Ukrainian service.
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Britain is accelerating preparations for “all eventualities” when it leaves the European Union, but both sides are hopeful an agreement on stepping up talks to unravel more than 40 years of partnership will be sealed soon.

With only 17 months remaining until Britain’s expected departure, the slow pace of talks has increased the possibility that London will leave without a deal, alarming business leaders who say time is running out for them to make investment decisions.

British and EU negotiators met in Brussels on Tuesday to try to agree a schedule for further divorce talks, with an initial proposal from the bloc to hold three more rounds before the end of the year not winning instant approval from London.

The pressure has spurred the British government to step up its Brexit plans, employing thousands more workers and spending millions to make sure customs posts, laws and systems work on day one of Brexit, even without a deal on a future relationship.

At a meeting with her ministers Tuesday, Prime Minister Theresa May was updated on plans for the tax and customs authority to add 3,000 to 5,000 workers next year and for spending of 500 million pounds ($660.45 million) for Brexit.

Domestic preparations

“Alongside the negotiations in Brussels, it is crucial that we are putting our own domestic preparations in place so that we are ready at the point that we leave the EU,” May’s spokesman told reporters.

“The preparatory work has seen a significant acceleration in recent months. Departments are preparing detailed delivery plans for each of the around 300 programs underway across government.”

May wants to silence critics in her ruling Conservative Party who are pressing her to walk away from talks, which have faltered over how much Britain should pay to leave the bloc.

Brexit campaigners are demanding that Britain leave with no deal if the talks do not move on beyond a discussion of the divorce settlement on a so-called Brexit bill, EU citizens rights and the border with EU member Ireland by December.

Brexit minister David Davis said Tuesday that he thought Britain would agree on some kind of basic deal with the European Union, even in the “very improbable” eventuality that they failed to agree on a trade deal.

Better tone

In a sign that an improved tone between the two sides, struck at a summit earlier this month, was continuing, EU chief negotiator Michel Barnier reaffirmed his message in the Slovak capital, Bratislava, that he was ready to “speed up negotiations.”

May’s government has also long said it would welcome an acceleration in the talks. But the sides have yet to agree on how to do that following a top-level meeting in Brussels on October 19-20.

Barnier has proposed three rounds — one that did not take place last week, and two more in the weeks starting November 16 and December 4. London prefers continuous talks.

“We are ready to accelerate, but we must have something to talk about,” said an EU official.

This was what Britain’s Oliver Robbins and Barnier’s deputy, Sabine Weyand, were seeking to agree on in Brussels on Tuesday.

Before leaving the EU, May faces a struggle to get parliamentary support for a law to sever political, financial and legal ties with the bloc — the EU Withdrawal Bill, for which lawmakers have proposed hundreds of amendments.

Asked whether May was preparing to offer a concession over a final vote on any deal struck with the EU, her spokesman said there was “lots of speculation in relation to Brexit.”

“We’ve always said that we’ll do whatever is necessary,” he said.
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Refugee advocates are calling attention to the poor treatment of refugees and migrants trapped on Greece’s islands, while in the mainland’s most notorious camp, conditions are equally grim.

November is expected to bring about the closure of Derveni, the only camp on mainland Greece where refugees and migrants are still living in tents, within the confines of a stripped-out factory on an industrial site near the northern city of Thessaloniki.

The end of Derveni — if it does happen — would come amid efforts to shift from crisis mode to a long term approach as the Greek state consolidates efforts to manage a new population of more than 50,000 people, many of whom Greek officials fear are likely to stay for years rather than months.

Amid an upturn in refugee arrivals into Greece and criticism of the state’s handling of the situation, Derveni’s beleaguered residents remain deeply uncertain about the future.

For some, the ‘End of the World’

“I’d thought things would get better but when I came here and experienced this. It felt like the end of the world,” said Jemal, a camp resident who asked to be identified by a name other than his real one.

Having fled his home in east Africa after speaking out against corruption. He remains too afraid to make his country of origin public. He crossed the Aegean on a dinghy from Turkey to the Greek island of Lesvos and spent four months there sleeping in a tent.

Around 13,500 migrants and refugees are currently stuck on the group of Greek islands that also include Chios, Samos, Kos and Leros.

They face possible deportation as they await the result of asylum applications more than a year and a half since an EU-Turkey deal promised, among other things, to return those whose applications were rejected back to Turkey, which in turn and in exchange for EU financial assistance would send “approved” refugees staying within its border on to European Union nations.

The general situation and poor living conditions in camps have provoked widespread criticism among humanitarian organizations, including a group of 19 that sent an open letter to Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsiprias on October 23. The letter called on the Greek government to end its policy of keeping refugees and migrants contained on the islands and demanded that the government immediately transfer them to the mainland in order “to meet their protection needs.”

Jamal’s new reality on the mainland, however, was worse.

“I want to have a normal life, but here life is not normal,” he said.

Tough Conditions

Derveni was among the camps used by the government early last summer after the dispersal of thousands from an ad-hoc camp created at the crossing point into Macedonia when the country closed its borders.

More than 200 people are now in the camp, with some having arrived unregistered and on foot having taken the land route from Turkey into northern Greece, and others, like Jemal, transferred there from the Greek islands by the state.

In recent weeks, these transfers have stopped, though pressure to get refugees off the islands is once again growing with around 6,000 refugees arriving from Turkey last month — a sharp upturn on previous months.

In Derveni, with temperatures sweltering in the summer and freezing in the winter and with volunteers denied access to the camp, despondence has spread. Drug use, thefts, and fighting have become a part of camp life.

“People come here and they have stress, they have problems, and they feel angry,” said Mohammed, an Iranian who was transferred to the camp from the Greek Island of Samos. He requested his surname not be used, as is common among many refugees who often fear that revealing their true identity might jeopardize their chances for asylum or the security of their families back home.

Meanwhile a source who recently accessed the camp warned about the safety conditions, telling VOA “If you had a fire in one tent, in ten minutes the whole warehouse would burn.”

“It’s not a place I’d wish on my worst enemy,” they added.

Yet to Close

Derveni is notorious among many humanitarian workers in Greece.

Liene Veide is a spokeswoman for the UNHCR, the UN’s refugee body, which has spoken out against relocating people from the islands to Derveni.

The camp was “not an appropriate place for any human being to live in, especially not long term,” said Veide.

Still, some turn up of their own accord, desperate for a place to live.

Ifigenia Anastasiadi, who until recently worked for a major NGO on the site, said the camp had become a “dump hole” for those whose nationalities meant they are less likely to be granted asylum.

In her time working there, Anastasiadi said she encountered a number of highly vulnerable residents, including those tortured in the countries they had fled.

Set to shut?

Gianluca Rocco, Greece’s chief of mission to the International Organization for Migration (IOM), which along with the Greek army oversees Derveni, said improvements had not been made because the camp had been expected to close sooner.“We were told many times the camp would be closing,” said Rocco, “and sometimes when you’re trying to close a camp it creates a situation where you don’t want to get into investing in something that will close.”

Greek migration policy minister Giannis Mouzalas pledged the camp would shut by the end of last year before pushing the date back again, to May of 2017.

The ministry for migration policy has not responded to requests for comment.

UNHCR officials told VOA Derveni is among five camps in northern Greece to be closed by the end of November. Eight others closed earlier this year.

Rocco asserted that plans to close the camp were far more definite this time, he adding it was very late to begin efforts to equip Derveni for winter.

Around 100 Derveni residents are vulnerable enough to fit the criteria to be moved into apartments, and some have already been moved as part of a wider UNHCR scheme.

The rest, meanwhile, are expected to be shifted to new camps in the coming weeks. After that, the future remains uncertain, especially for those who arrived on foot.

Having left the islands to be confronted with equally bad conditions in Derveni, Jemal remains cynical about the prospects of the camp shutdown and any potential benefits for him.

“I’m not expecting anything,” he said, “I’ve been disappointed by promises before, so why would I expect anything from anyone?”
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Official figures show that the robust economic recovery across the 19-country eurozone persisted during the third quarter, helping unemployment fall to a near 9-year low.

Eurostat, the European Union’s statistics agency, said Tuesday that the eurozone economy grew by 0.6 percent during the July to September period. Though that’s slightly down on the stellar 0.7 percent tick recorded in the second quarter, it’s modestly higher than expectations for a 0.5 percent rise.

Separately, Eurostat said unemployment fell to 8.9 percent in September from 9.0 percent the previous month. That’s the lowest rate since January 2009.

Elsewhere, Eurostat said annual inflation in the eurozone dipped to 1.4 percent in October from 1.5 percent as the core rate, which strips out volatile items, surprisingly fell to 0.9 percent from 1.1 percent.

 
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Ousted Catalonia leader Carles Puigdemont is expected to make a public appearance Tuesday in Brussels, a day after he traveled there while Spanish prosecutors announced plans to seek sedition, rebellion and embezzlement charges against Catalan leaders.

Belgian lawyer Paul Bekaert told VRT television Monday Puigdemont was in Brussels and had appointed him as his lawyer.

“He is not in Belgium to specifically ask for political asylum. That is not decided yet,” Bekaert said.

Watch: Catalan leaders flee to Belgium

Chief prosecutor Jose Manuel Maza said Monday he would seek to charge the leaders of Catalonia who led a push to secede from Spain. It is up to a court to decide whether to move forward with the charges, which could bring lengthy jail terms, including up to 30 years for rebellion.

Catalonia held a referendum October 1 on the question of whether the autonomous region should break away from Spain. The government in Madrid rejected the secession push, and after Catalan lawmakers declared independence last week, the central government asserted control over the region and dissolved the local parliament.

New elections are set for December, and Catalonia’s separatist party announced it would field candidates.
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When real estate mogul Donald Trump was running for the U.S. presidency, a young foreign policy adviser, George Papadopoulos, attempted to arrange a meeting between Russian government officials and the Trump campaign. Trump, in an interview at the time, described Papadopoulos as “an energy and oil consultant, excellent guy.”

The would-be Trump-Russia meeting never occurred. But on Monday, however, special counsel Robert Mueller disclosed that Papadopoulos pleaded guilty earlier this month to lying to agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation about the timing and importance of his contacts with “an overseas professor.” He understood this person to have “substantial connections” to Russian officials that had “dirt” on Trump’s election challenger, Democrat Hillary Clinton, and to communications with “a certain female Russian national” believed to be a niece of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Papadopoulos, according to his guilty plea to a criminal information, told FBI agents in a January 27 interview that his contacts with the London professor came before he joined the Trump campaign and that his contacts with the Russian woman were casual and inconsequential, both of which prosecutors said were lies.

The prosecution’s statement of the case against Papadopoulos said he “made numerous false statements and omitted material facts” about his contacts with the professor and the Russian woman and a connection with the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

U.S. Senator Mark Warner, vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the Papadopoulos guilty plea “is just the latest in a series of undisclosed contacts, misleading public statements, potentially compromising information, and highly questionable actions from the time of the Trump campaign that together, remain a cause for deep concern and continued investigation.”

Papadopoulos graduated in 2009 from DePaul University in Chicago with a bachelor’s degree in political science and government, then earned a master’s degree from University College London and the London School of Economics. He later worked for the Hudson Institute, a Washington think tank, from 2011 to 2015 before joining the unsuccessful Republican presidential campaign of Dr. Ben Carson, whom Trump later named as his housing secretary.

After Trump took office, Papadopoulos worked as an independent oil, gas and policy consultant.

With his guilty plea, Papadopoulos faces up to five years’ imprisonment and a $250,000 fine, but his sentence could be substantially less if he testifies about his contacts with Trump campaign officials that are described in the statement of his actions.

WATCH: What is an indictment?
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A journalist became the second woman to enter Russia’s presidential race, saying on Monday she wanted to use the election to campaign for the rights of single mothers and children.

The presidential election takes place in March next year.

President Vladimir Putin is expected to stand and win, but has yet to confirm his plans.

Some opposition activists believe the Kremlin’s aim is to crown the field with candidates designed to distract and entertain in order to boost turnout and divide the liberal opposition.

The Kremlin denies that, saying anyone who meets the legal criteria to run can take part.

On Monday, mother-of-two Ekaterina Gordon, 37, who has worked as a TV and radio talk show host, said she was putting herself forward as an independent presidential candidate.

She said she had never voted, but had become disillusioned by both the liberal opposition and pro-Kremlin politicians.

“I understood that everyone is fed from the same trough,” Gordon said in an online video.

“There are many populist themes… But there is one reality — we are a country of single mothers, and no one gives a damn about them.”

She said she had not agreed her candidacy with the Kremlin and had experience of the kind of problems Russian woman faced due to her ownership of a law firm.

Another female candidate, Russian TV personality Ksenia Sobchak, said earlier this month she planned to run for president, offering liberal voters unhappy with Putin’s rule someone to back, though she, like Gordon, has little prospect of winning.

Post-Soviet Russia has never had a female president.

Kremlin critic and opposition leader Alexei Navalny wants to run too, but Russia’s central election commission has declared him ineligible due to a suspended prison sentence, which he says was politically-motivated.
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The future of Turkey’s 11,000-year-old wine-making tradition is in question as the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan continues to enforce restrictions on production, sale, and advertising of wine in line with his party’s vision of steering Turkey – with its historically western tastes – in the direction of conservative Islam. Jason Godman filed this WebVid.
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Hundreds of women took to the streets of Paris and 10 other French cities to protest against sexual harassment in the wake of the scandal surrounding Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein.

In Paris, women gathered in Republic Square, waving signs bearing the #metoo hashtag used by tens of thousands of women to share personal stories of harassment and assault.

Similar gatherings were also held in Marseille, Bordeaux and Lille, among other cities.

As the #metoo campaign erupted across the United States, a similar campaign unfolded across France under the hashtag  #balancetonporc or #squealonyourpig. As in America, French women have begun naming and shaming their attackers.

Since it started, several prominent figures have been targeted in French assault claims, including a lawmaker in President Emmanuel Macron’s party, a judge on France’s equivalent of reality show “America’s Got Talent” and Oxford professor Tariq Ramadan, a leading lecturer in Islamic studies.

French-Polish filmmaker Roman Polanski, who is wanted in the U.S. for the statutory rape of a 13-year-old girl in the 1970s, has also been hit with new abuse claims.

The avalanche of accusations was unleashed weeks ago when The New York Times and The New Yorker published reports of women accusing Weinstein of rape and sexual harassment going back decades. Among the accusers were some of Hollywood’s most prominent actresses, including Angelina Jolie, Gwyneth Paltrow and Rosanna Arquette.
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An air of calm settled over Barcelona after hundreds of thousands of Catalans attended a rally Sunday for Spanish unity.  The atmosphere of the rally was peaceful, as police helicopters monitored from above.

Amid a forest of Spanish national flags and chants of “Viva Espana,” protesters called for the jailing of Catalan president Carles Puigdemont, who on Friday issued a declaration of independence shortly before the Spanish government stripped Catalonia of its autonomy.  

But the calm that followed the rally in the Catalan capital attended by an estimated 300,000 people had the quality of the stillness before a storm.  Few are ready to hazard a prediction of how events in Catalonia may unfold in the coming days in a confrontation that has seen intransigence from both sides.

How Madrid starts imposing direct rule Monday on its restive northeast region, and how separatists respond, will determine the next phase in the month-long cat-and-mouse standoff between the politicians in Madrid and Catalan secessionists.  Both appear to be banking on the other side tiring like a bull played by a matador.

But fears are growing the perilous confrontation, at times visceral and seamed with past historical grievances including from the era of Gen. Francisco Franco, will degenerate into violence, despite the separatists’ determination to remain non-violent and Madrid’s eagerness not to repeat the national police violence that accompanied an October 1 independence referendum.

Olive branch

Despite the sacking of Puigdemont by Madrid among a raft of direct-rule measures announced Friday, including the dissolving of the regional parliament, Spanish ministers offered an olive branch Sunday by suggesting the Catalan leader is not barred from continuing in politics and even welcomed the idea of him taking part in regional elections Madrid has called for December 21.

“If Puigdemont takes part in these elections, he can exercise [his] democratic opposition,” said government spokesman Íñigo Méndez de Vigo.  That suggests the implacable deputy Spanish prime minister, María Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría Antón, a 46-year-old former prosecutor who is charged with overseeing direct rule, is not planning to kick off by arresting Catalan separatist leaders, a move some analysts say would be inflammatory, if it is tried.

Nonetheless, there will be several flash-points in the coming week that could push the confrontation, the worst political crisis to roil Spain since a failed military coup in 1981, down paths neither Madrid nor the secessionists want or could control, say analysts.  They worry the type of clashes seen on October 1, when the national police and Civil Guard tried to distort the referendum, will be seen when Madrid decides  to enforce direct-rule by closing down Catalonia’s parliament and regional government.  “I really will be amazed if we don’t see more of that, sadly,” said Sally Ann-Kitts, a lecturer in Hispanic studies at Britain’s University of Bristol.

“All sides seem to be living in Wonderland,” according to John Carlin, who was fired from his job at the Spanish newspaper El País earlier this month over an article he wrote highly critical of the Spanish government for its response to the independence referendum.

In an article for the London Sunday Times, Carlin argued the biggest risk may come if the idea takes hold “among highly energized independence-seeking youth that they have been the victims of a Franquista coup d’état.”

Another risk is that provocateurs on either side, violent anarchists or hardline Spanish nationalists take advantage of the mess Catalonia is in and organize an incident to provoke a reaction from their opponents.  On Friday young Spanish nationalists attacked a Catalan radio station.

Rival administrations

As things stand, Catalans will wake up Monday to two rival administrations in their region claiming legitimacy, the Puigdemont-led regional government and an emergency authority staffed by Spanish civil servants and led by Sáenz de Santamaría.  On Saturday, Puigdemont defied the fact that he was formally dismissed by the Spanish government and urged Catalans to “defend” the new republic in a televised address.

Separatist leaders and their supporters appear determined to wear Madrid down much as a matador does with a bull by obstructing and resisting the orders issued by Madrid. “The only answer we have is self-defense – institutional self-defense and civil self-defense.  I hope Catalans won’t be intimidated by Madrid,” says Abel Escriba, a pro-independence political scientist.

Madrid is banking on Catalonia’s 200,000 public employees and the executives of public companies in the region accepting direct-rule and ignoring the instructions of the Puigdemont-led regional government.  Public employee, teacher and firefighter unions have proclaimed their members will ignore Madrid’s instruction.

“We are going to ask them to be professional and to continue to provide services for their citizens,” a Spanish official told VOA last week.  The strategy is to be as light-touch as possible as the region is steered to the snap elections in December, which the Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy is gambling will go against the separatists.

A poll published by El Pais Saturday suggested a small majority of Catalans (52 percent to 43 percent) favor the dissolution of the regional parliament and the holding of the early elections.  Fifty-five percent of Catalan respondents opposed the declaration of independence, with 41 percent in favor of secession.

 
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