PP chief proposes coalition to combat Catalan independence drive

Top Popular Party (PP) officials are gathering in Barcelona on the weekend prior to the Diada – Catalonia’s yearly celebration day, held on September 11 – to send out a clear message: that sovereignty would be bad for the region and bad for Spain.

In order to fight the independence drive, PP Secretary General María Dolores de Cospedal is proposing a coalition among all the parties that are working to keep Catalonia within Spain.

This hypothetical union would include the PP, the Catalan Socialist Party (PSC), Unión, Progreso y Democracia (UPyD), Ciutadans and Unió, one half of the CiU bloc that governs the region.

“Today I want to send out a message to Ciutadans: I want to tell them that our arms are open to the creation of a great coalition,” said Cospedal. “We are also extending this offer to UPyD leaders in Catalonia, and to Unió, and to the PSC. Because above and beyond ideologies, the main thing is to defend Catalonia as part of Spain. We need to be strong and we need to be united.”

Cospedal insisted that the road taken by regional leader Artur Mas can only lead “to the suicide of his political party and to nothingness.”

She also compared the attitude of Catalan secessionists with a dictatorship.

“Catalan independence advocates want us all to be the same, because anyone who does not think the same is automatically an enemy of Catalonia. That is not nation building. That is totalitarianism, it is an undercover dictatorship.”