New Spanish Government Allows Catalonia To Reopen 3 Representative Offices Abroad

The Catalan authorities are going to reopen the region's representative offices in Mexico, Argentina and Tunisia with the consent of the Spanish Foreign Ministry, according to a decree published in the official journal of the autonomous region's government on Friday

MADRID (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 17th January, 2020) The Catalan authorities are going to reopen the region's representative offices in Mexico, Argentina and Tunisia with the consent of the Spanish Foreign Ministry, according to a decree published in the official journal of the autonomous region's government on Friday.

The Catalan High Court ordered to shut down representative offices in Mexico, Argentine and Tunisia in November due to the Spanish government's lawsuit claiming that the offices are used "as a tool to promote secession movement and to blacken the international image of Spain."

Spanish government spokeswoman Maria Jesus Montero, who is also a finance minister, confirmed the government's nod to reopening offices at a press conference, saying that this time, the documents of the Catalan authorities complied with Spanish law, in particular, clearly stipulating that their activities would be limited by commercial relations, and they "in no case replace and are not an alternative to Spanish embassies.

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The Spanish Foreign Ministry has repeatedly criticized the opening of Catalonia's representative offices abroad and even disputed the Catalan government's decisions to do that in courts.

After Madrid introduced direct rule in Catalonia in October 2017 in the wake of the declaration of independence by the region's parliament, the work of all Catalan representative offices abroad except for the Brussels office was suspended.

However, in the summer of 2018, the Catalan authorities announced the resumption of the work of a number of "embassies" and even the opening of new offices. However, after a series of disputes, the Catalan offices in the United Kingdom and Ireland, Germany, the United States, Italy, Switzerland and France continued their work.