Basque leader reveals mediation efforts in Catalan crisis

Basque leader Inigo Urkullu said Thursday that days before a banned referendum, he warned Spain’s then prime minister the situation in Catalonia was “getting out of hand,” as he testified at the trial of separatist leaders.

Urkullu, the nationalist president of Spain’s northern Basque Country, also said he thought Carles Puigdemont, Catalonia’s then separatist leader, was not keen on declaring unilateral independence as eventually happened.

Speaking at the Madrid trial of 12 Catalan separatist leaders over the 2017 attempt to secede from Spain, Urkullu revealed his mediation efforts in the crisis.

He said he had been speaking to Mariano Rajoy, in power at the time, and Puigdemont for months before the independence referendum on October 1, 2017.

He told the Supreme Court that on September 21, he had warned Rajoy of the potentially disastrous consequences of the crisis.

“I made the observation that everything was getting out of hand,” he said.

“I told him I thought the next steps should be carefully considered so as not to provoke situations that would lead to a social breakdown.”

Urkullu said the phone conversation took place a day after police raided the offices of the regional economy ministry in Barcelona ahead of the referendum.

These were stopped from leaving the building by hundreds of protesters in a long, tense incident that saw several police vehicles destroyed — events that are being closely scrutinised at the trial.

Urkullu said he started his mediation efforts in June 2017 when he met with Puigdemont in Barcelona.

The following month, he met with Rajoy and held countless phone calls and meetings with people on both sides after that.

In October, Urkullu said he sought to dissuade Puigdemont to go through with a unilateral independence declaration and to avoid Madrid imposing direct rule on the semi-autonomous region.

Puigdemont “didn’t at all want to proceed with a unilateral declaration of independence,” Urkullu said.

He added he also felt Rajoy “was not really keen on applying” direct rule on Catalonia and may have decided against it if Puigdemont had called snap elections to ease the crisis.

But after agreeing to do so, Puigdemont changed his mind on October 26 with the pressure of pro-independence protesters who were “rebelling” and his political grouping, Urkullu said.

On October 27, Catalonia’s parliament declared independence and Rajoy immediately sacked the regional executive, dissolved parliament, called snap elections and imposed direct rule on Catalonia.