A far-left Catalan party on Monday threatened “massive civil disobedience” if Spain dismisses the region’s Government to stave off its threat to declare independence.
The Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP) party denounced Madrid’s plans as the “biggest aggression” against the Catalan people since the Franco dictatorship.
“This aggression will receive a response in the form of massive civil disobedience,” said the party, a key regional power broker, in a statement.
The CUP’s threat upped the stakes in the standoff over Catalan independence, which has raised fears of unrest in Spain’s deepest political crisis in decades. Half a million angry separatists took to the streets of Barcelona on Saturday after Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy announced he would remove Catalan leader Carles Puigdemont and his executive.