Catalan president calls for peaceful resistance, 'without violence, without insults'


Catalan President Carles Puigdemont, who with other pro-independence Catalan leaders was deposed by Spain's national government on Friday, called on Saturday for peaceful resistance to Madrid's attempt to impose national rule on the autonomous region.
Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy obtained permission to invoke Article 155 of the Spanish constitution in response to the Catalan parliament's Friday declaration of independence. Puidgemont urged Catalans to resist Article 155 implementation "without violence, without insults, in an inclusive way, respecting people."
"We will continue to work to build a free country," Puidgemont said, "to ensure we have a society with less injustice, more equality, more solidarity, and more fraternity with all the peoples of the world, starting with the peoples of Spain with whom we want to remain connected through respect and mutual recognition." Watch an excerpt of his comments below. Bonnie Kristian
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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