Rallies in Barcelona and Madrid call for talks on Catalonia independence

Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said the country may consider suspending Catalonia’s autonomy after rejecting the legality of the region’s independence referendum last week.

Mr Vargas Llosa is also among 60 Spain-based intellectuals and academics who have signed an open letter asking the worldwide community not to support the idea of external mediation as a solution to the crisis in Catalonia.

Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont has threatened to declare independence early next week, and hundreds of thousands of Catalan protesters marched in favor of splitting from Spain this week.

Asked by El Pais reporters on Saturday whether he would be willing to use article 155, Rajoy said: ‘I don’t rule out absolutely anything that is within the law … Attendees respected the organizers’ call to not bring the Spanish or Catalan flag.

People on a rooftop wave Spanish flags during a march in downtown Barcelona, Spain, to protest the Catalan government’s push for secession from the rest of Spain, on Sunday.

Other protests asking for dialogue were held in cities including Valencia, Bilbao, Pamplona and Sanitago de Compostela, news agency Europa Press reported.

“Other states will be hesitant to recognize Catalonia as an independent and sovereign State and this way to prioritize Catalonia’s interest over the ones of Spain”, the analyst said.

Spain’s red-and-yellow flag has always been taboo here in Catalonia and throughout the country because it has been linked to groups supportive of Gen. Francisco Franco’s dictatorship.

Final results released by Catalan authorities showed 90 per cent of the 2.3 million people who voted on Sunday backed independence.

Madrid’s attempts to prevent the vote caused more tension.

A former Prime Minister of France has said the idea of Catalonia receiving independence from Spain would be “madness”.

All this goes against Spain’s Constitutional Court, which has repeatedly said that the country’s 1978 constitution does not allow regions to call independence referendums.

Valls questions the wish of Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont to pull the region from the country, saying they would be leaving the European Union if they did so. Catalonia’s top two banks announced they were relocating their headquarters to other parts of Spain because of financial uncertainty if there is an independence declaration.

“At the moment he [Puigdemont] is providing no clear timeline for a unilateral independence declaration”.

But voter turnout was 43 percent, and the Spanish government argues the referendum itself was illegal.

Catalonia, a region of around 7.5 million people with its own distinct language and culture, has had a complex relationship at times with Madrid.

Spain specifically apologised to demonstrators who were injured during police efforts to stop Sunday’s independence referendum as both sides looked for a way out of the nation’s worst political crisis since it became a democracy four decades ago.

People who were wearing white were backing the slogan, “Shall we talk?” which Jordi Cuixart, president of one of the one of the grassroots groups driving Catalonia’s separatist movement, told the Guardian was a call to Spanish politicians. It can’t be in the hands of extremists, the radicals and the (far-left secessionist party) CUP, ‘ Rajoy said.