The Spanish Government has welcomed the Supreme Court’s ruling that Holyrood cannot hold Indyref2 without Westminster’s consent.
In a unanimous decision on Wednesday, five justices, including the Court’s Scottish president, Lord Reed, ruled that a proposed Holyrood Referendum Bill would "relate to" the Union and sovereignty of the UK Parliament, and was therefore beyond Holyrood's legislative competence.
It means that First Minister Nicola Sturgeon will not be able to hold a referendum on 19 October 2023 under Holyrood’s existing devolved powers, as she had hoped.
In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision, María Jesús Montero, Spain’s Minister of Finance and Public Function and Deputy Secretary General of The Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE), said that the decision not to allow an independence referendum in Scotland “marks the limits” to separatism.
READ MORE: Supreme Court rules against Indyref2, what happens next?
Speaking to the media in the halls of Spain’s Congress of Deputies in Madrid on Thursday, Ms Montero said: "If at any time the (Catalan) independentistas were confident that Scotland was going to lead the way, they have found, as in Spain, that justice sets the limits of the constitutional framework.”
In addition, she assured that the territorial integrity of Spain “is guaranteed”.
Ms Montero was questioned further on the effects of the Supreme Court’s decision on the Catalan independence movement, which uses the Scottish example to claim a right to also hold an independence referendum with the same legal validity.
In response, she indicated that each country has its own constitutional framework, making it difficult to establish similarities around such matters of importance. However, she noted that she considers it “difficult” for any constitution “to protect a project of segregation of a country”.
The Spanish Government’s response to the Supreme Court ruling mirrors the response to the verdict of the 2014 independence referendum, when the then Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, in a televised address, congratulated the Scottish people for deciding “clearly and unequivocally” to remain part of the UK.
The former PM added that the decision meant Scots “avoided the serious economic, social, institutional and political consequences that their separation from the United Kingdom and Europe would have entailed”.
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