Catalan businesses join street protesters in pro-Spain message

Catalan business executives stepped up their push to defuse a separatist movement as thousands gathered in Barcelona on Sunday to demand the region stay in Spain.

 

Chairman Juan Jose Brugera led a delegation from Cercle d’Economia, a business forum, that met with Catalan President Carles Puigdemont on Saturday in Girona to demand he withdraw his threat to declare a Catalan republic, said Jordi Alberich, the group’s director general. The Cercle’s board includes CaixaBank  Chairman Jordi Gual and Jaime Guardiola, chief executive officer of Banco Sabadell.

 

“We asked him to directly remove the shadow of a declaration by saying that it won’t happen,” Alberich, who was at the meeting, said by phone. “The situation is the most tremendous mess. Despite everything I believe that some solution will be found through sensible political negotiation. There is no alternative.”

 

Already battered by a corporate stampede to exit the region, the Catalan president is struggling to maintain support as the clock ticks down to a meeting on Tuesday that could trigger a split. Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, meantime, must decide whether to preemptively reassert control, as some of his main allies are urging him to do. Rajoy told El Pais Spain will exist for a long time and portrayed his bid to stop the separatists as “Europe’s battle.”

 

The crisis is taking its toll and Puigdemont risks being cast adrift by the rest of Europe if he pushes ahead with plans based on a referendum a week ago that breached Spain’s constitution. Already, about a dozen companies, including the biggest symbol of the rebel region’s wealth, CaixaBank, have said they will or plan to relocate their legal bases.

 

“There is a growing element of social frustration,” said Alejandro Quiroga, professor of Spanish history at the University of Newcastle. “The question is whether there is actually any room for talks because the core of the matter remains unchanged: the concept of sovereignty.” Thousands gathered in Barcelona Sunday to demand Puigdemont shelves his plans for independence.