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Catalan president Artur Mas announced on 13 October that he was scrapping plans to hold a public consultation on independence on 9 November, the date earmarked for a referendum until its suspension by the Constitutional Court of Spain. As El Periódico explains, Mas’s decision to “replace the referendum on sovereignty with a ‘participatory process’ […] provoked a rupture within the sovereigntist bloc”.

Mas did not know how to rally other independence parties around his proposal, nor to bring them into his government. Some, such as the Republican Left of Catalonia, argued “the Catalan parliament must proclaim independence”, which it says would “open a constitutional process”.

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