A Tourist in Paris

Paris.  If I had known, I probably wouldn’t have gone.  I don’t mean the grey, wet, and very cold weather I endured there.  I had warm clothes, warm and comfortable boots, my beret, gloves, and an umbrella.  I was invincible.

I’m talking about the sudden and unexpected dip in my income that came about soon after I had already taken the funds out of my retirement account and booked.  There could be no refund.  It would be ridiculous not to go, n’est-ce-pas?

I’d never done an organized tour before – not even a day trip.  This tour was with Road Scholar and was called “Independent Paris: People, Places, Culture”.  Would we be led around like ignorant sheep?  Would the others in the group be good company?  They said the energy level required was fairly high and there would be a considerable amount of walking.  Would I be able to keep up?

None of it was a problem.  The group was varied, I was fit, and the tour was well conceived and well executed.  Brigitte Young our group leader was very good, and James M’Kenzie-Hall, our lecturer/guide was intelligent, knowledgeable, well spoken, and witty (in the best British tradition).

I came by the Spanish/French fast train, to the Gare de Lyon and arrived at the hotel (Le Patio de Sant Antoine) in plenty of time to unpack and then go to the welcome orientation at 5:30.  During our introductions there was one husband who said he had come because his wife made him, and indeed, I believe he managed not to enjoy himself.  In Paris!  Of the sixteen people in our group, six were married couples and the rest of us had come alone.

We would have lectures at our meeting room in the hotel and then off we would go to see the sights and visit museums.  While out and about, we would be connected to our guide by a wireless audio guide system, each of us having an earphone wrapped around one ear.  This allowed James to continue his lectures as we walked and eliminated the need for the leader to wave an umbrella or flag in order to keep us together. 

    

The first morning we had a coach all to ourselves and were driven around for an overview of Paris with one stop for a photo opportunity at the Eiffel Tower.  When that tour finished the driver had no choice but to pull up to stop on the left of a busy one-way street, leaving us to get off into traffic.  That was our first adventure.

The next evening we enjoyed a boat ride up and down the Seine, seeing Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, and what there was to see of the left and right bank of Paris lit up at night.  It was freezing cold and very beautiful.  My photos all turned out to be rubbish.  Taking decent night photos from a moving vehicle can be my challenge for 2015.

One day Brigitte took us to a neighborhood open-air food market not far from our hotel, followed by a charcuterie lunch at a nearby wine bar.  The cheese and sausage and the wine were all excellent, but what I enjoyed the most was the informal, cozy environment that surrounded us in that bar full of regulars – something we (or at least I) would probably not have experienced on our own.  To get to the toilet in this cozy neighborhood joint you exited to the small courtyard at the back and found the door to a tiny room.  The good thing was that the door could be locked.  The toilet, so to speak, consisted of a hole in the ground with small platforms where you were to put your feet.  Having experienced one of these a few years ago in a bar near Avignon, I knew to step back before I pulled on the chain to flush, and thus I did not get water all over my shoes.  The other good thing was that there WAS toilet paper.  This was our second adventure.

At the market

We explored the Sainte-Chapelle and Notre Dame, Latin Quarter, the Marais, the Palais Royal (where Colette used to live), the Musée d’Orsay, Musée de l’Orangerie, and Montmartre. I did the unthinkable and skipped the visit to the Louvre.   I went on my own to revisit the Pere Lachaise Cemetery and paid my respects to Colette, one of my favorite authors.  I meant also to visit Chopin, Edith Piaf, and Oscar Wilde, but they kept hiding from me and it suddenly became late, and it’s a big cemetery, and I didn’t want to risk being locked in at 5:30 and having to spend the night with my idols.   With Elaine (with whom I shared an interest in Art Nouveau and good food) I went to the Musée Decoratif, the Tuileries Gardens, the Champs-Elysées and the Christmas market, and ate at Le Procope and Le Grand Colbert.  I also had lunch with most of the group at the beautiful restaurant in the Musée d’Orsay.

Pere Lachaise Cemetery

This little light of mine...

The Palais Royale where Colette lived for many years

I had one errand to do and took advantage of the fact that you can easily obtain Chanuka candles in France and bought me a box while wandering solo through the streets in the Marais. It was one those small blue boxes that I've known all my life, however, back home when I opened it for the first night, I found that rather than the assorted colors I've always had, these were all white. That wasn't a problem; white candles look nice. Never mind that these dripped like all hell and smelled funny. Then on the eighth night I discovered that the box was one candle short.

Playing football behind the Louvre

La Grossa, The Catalan Lottery

La Grossa de Cap d’Any is Catalunya’s New Year’s answer to the Spanish national Christmas lottery El Gordo.  It was dreamed up last year by the Generalitat, Catalunya’s regional government, as one of many measures to try and fix the lousy budget Catalunya receives from Spain.

Catalunya generates 20% of Spain’s economic activity, it contributes 25% of Spain’s tax revenue, and next year it will get back 9% of Spain’s spending (this year it was 11%).  The Generalitat tried to impose a 1-euro per prescription co-pay within its national health care coverage, as well as a tax on bank deposits, and both were struck down by the Spanish government (always trying to find a way to help the Catalans).  So it decided to do a lottery, which turned out to be more popular than taxes anyway.

La Grossa is a cap gross, one of the big heads that, together with giants, are a tradition in the local festivals. 

Artur Mas, President of the Generalitat
with La Grossa

La Grossa does a walkabout

La Grossa by the beach

This year La Grossa was joined by a very special dignitary.  Earlier in the year, Queen Elizabeth II came over to join her in helping to publicize the lottery.  They make a fine pair, don’t you think?  

Her Highness and La Grossa

Her Highness calls La Grossa Mrs. Grossa
La Grossa never utters a word
(and never wears a hat)

But the real question is, will I win this year?  Last year I bought four tickets for me and two as gifts and none of them won anything.  

This year I’ve bought tickets again. 

It’s good to have hope, and the money goes to a good cause – social programs in Catalunya -- where I live.  The lottery will be held tomorrow.  Wish me luck!

All images were taken from internet media sources

United Together or United Apart?

Last week Artur Mas, President of the Generalitat of Catalunya, gave a speech in which he laid out his plan for holding a referendum that would be early Parliamentary elections in the form of a plebiscite since Spain will not allow a legal referendum, and if the vote favored independence, what that parliament would do to set up and declare the new state and how long it would take them to do it. 

He proposed that those in favor of independence would run on a single list of candidates on the pro-independence ticket.  In that way, there could be no misinterpretation of the results of the election.  This would be important, if independence wins, in the resulting negotiations with Madrid, the EU, and in gaining international recognition for the new state when independence was declared. 

In addition to politicians from various political parties, that list would include a number of professionals who would lend their expertise to the setting up of the new state.  This parliament would set up all the mechanisms of a new state within 18 months at which time new, normal parliamentary elections would be held.  Mas would not run in those subsequent elections and neither would the professionals nor a majority of the politicians who had served in this interim period.

President Mas said his proposal called for generosity.  It meant putting individual and party aspirations aside to work together for the single, unifying cause.  He said he would be willing to be first on that ticket or last.  His speech was an inspiration to the leaders of the grassroots organizations that have been organizing the massive demonstrations these last three years, and to the public.

Evidently, it was not an inspiration to Oriol Junqueras, President of Esquerra Republicana Catalana, (ERC, the left-wing Catalan party).  Junqueras is a university history professor who has put aside his academic work to serve for some time in the Catalan government, and he gave his speech this week.  Junqueras proposed that each party run separately but under an umbrella with a common name, such as xx Party for Independence, so it was clear which were the pro-independence parties.  He claimed that this would win more pro-independence votes. 

I think the general reaction to this was dismay.  I saw it on the faces of Carme Forcadell and Muriel Casals, the leaders of the two big grassroots organizations, as they sat in the first row on the audience.  And I could read it subsequently on the posts of my friends and many media commentators.   What people want now is unity – not several parties, each vying for votes, each with its individual platform.

Artur Mas thinks that it is important to show a unified front to Madrid and to the rest of the world (and to the Catalan public!), as has been shown up until now.  That political parties spanning the spectrum from left to center right can sit down and work together as they have done is a great part of the strength of the independence movement.  When President Rajoy came to Barcelona last week, he made a snide comment about the unified list saying it was a ridiculous idea and to please show some respect to the Catalans.  That alone should be enough to get ERC and the alternative left (further left) CUP to join up.

Junqueras had some good ideas.  He said independence should be declared at the start and not the end of the process, thus allowing negotiations to take place between equals and not dominant and subject parties.  And he saw no reason to hold a referendum at the end of the 18 months in order to confirm what had already been voted on in the plebiscite.  Rather, that referendum should be to ratify the newly drawn up constitution.

Some people think Junqueras wants separate lists because that would give him the possibility of being elected president.  I hope that his idea of separate tickets is his bargaining chip so that his other proposals get accepted.  Because Junqueras wants independence probably even more than Mas does, they will probably come to some mutually agreeable resolution to this discrepancy.  Neither one wants to bring the trajectory of the independence movement to a halt.

As one commentator wrote, what is needed is a strong, united political base that will work with vision and strategy, coordination and intelligence.

But my friend Trini said it best: “We have a president who wants to make history and an historian who wants to be president.”

Democracy The Catalan Way

Artur Mas, President of the Generalitat of Catalunya gave a speech last week.  It was a speech that could serve as a lesson in democracy to the Spanish government, to the EU and its member countries, and to the rest of the world.

In his speech, Mas reminded the audience how it is that Catalunya has arrived at its advanced stage of peacefully and democratically seeking independence from Spain. 

There was the Catalan Statute of Autonomy in 2006, approved in Catalunya in a referendum, approved by the Spanish Congress, and later struck down by the Spanish Constitutional Court at the instigation of the PP party.

There was the Financial Pact, approved by the Catalan Parliament in 2012 that President Rajoy would not even sit down to discuss.

Since 2012 there have been three massive public demonstrations for the right to vote on the question of independence.  In the first, 1.5 million people participated, in the second, 1.6 million, and this year 1.8 million.  The Spanish government has chosen to ignore this huge public outcry while President Rajoy and others of the PP party cynically talk about the silent majority.

After refusing to allow a referendum, declaring a non-binding consultation illegal, and finally declaring a very watered-down voting process that would have been simply a citizen participation without official voting rolls also illegal, President Mas held the citizen participation anyway.  Instead of voting rolls, IDs were checked and compared against census information at the time of casting the ballot.

More than two million people came out to vote and over one million eight hundred thousand (80%) voted for independence.  For having organized this citizen participation process, where the public could tell its leaders, on paper, in a countable manner (thus eliminating the question of silent majorities) what it wanted, President Mas, his Vice President, and the Catalan Minister of Education were all three criminally charged by the chief Spanish Prosecutor.

President Mas said that these are not normal times and thus the measures needed are also not normal.  The only way the Catalans will be able to hold a real vote is to have Parliamentary elections in the form of a plebiscite.  This means that instead of running on typical party platforms, the parties state whether or not they support a specific issue – the issue here being independence from Spain.  Parliamentary elections come under the jurisdiction of the Generalitat and there is no way the Spanish government and its courts can stop them being held.

Mas is inclined to hold early elections and made it clear that he will do so only if there is only the one issue to be voted on  – that it not be combined with other possible platform positions.  This way it will be clear to the Spanish government and, equally important, to the rest of the world, what the Catalans were voting for.  With one issue, there will be no question of how to interpret the results.

He also made it clear that he believes it would be best if there was one unified pro-independence ticket – that this would make it clear to the rest of the world that Catalans really were unified in their desire for independence – that they weren’t fragmented by party politics.   The political parties need to put aside their political differences for a short time – an act of generosity -- in order to achieve independence which will only receive international recognition if there is a clear majority of vote.

He went on to suggest, assuming pro-independence won the vote, that this next legislature would last for 18 months.  During that time all the mechanisms of a state would be put in place, negotiations with Spain, with Europe, and with other countries would take place and independence would be declared.

He suggested that in addition to professional politicians, that a number of people from civil society be included in this government that would include leaders of the grassroots movement and experts in useful fields.  

At the end of the 18 months, new elections would be held.  None of the non-politicians would run again for office and neither would a majority of the professional politicians.  President Mas would definitely not run again.  The setting up of the new Catalan state was not to be a tool for political advancement.  Those who participated in the formation of the new state would do it out of generosity.

President Mas is from a center right political party.  Tomorrow we’ll hear what the leader of the Catalan left has to say. 

One Vote Down, One to Go

It seemed a very long time coming and now, just a week later, it seems that it happened months ago.  I suppose that is because of all the pent up emotions.  Every day we were reading the newspapers and watching the news for the latest development: What obstacle will they put next?  Will the police or army block the entrances to the polling stations?  Will people be arrested?  With all the obstacles and threats, can there be a decent result?  Will it actually happen at all?

Last Sunday, in spite of all that the Spanish government had to throw in their path, 2,236,806 Catalans went to vote on a referendum that if not legal and binding, at least gave them the chance to voice their opinion on paper ballots – a basic democratic right.  That opinion was 80% in favor of independence from Spain. 

Because the Spanish government would not agree to a legal and binding referendum, the Catalan government made plans for a legal but non-binding consultation.  But the Spanish government was determined not to let the Catalans vote under any circumstances, and they filed a complaint with the Spanish Constitutional Court.  The Court, upon agreeing to review the complaint, suspended the consultation and any preparations pertaining to it. 

Artur Mas, the President of the Catalan government, then announced that the vote would go ahead, but not under the Catalan law under which the original consultation had been planned, but as an informal voter participation that would be run by volunteers so as not to put public employees at risk in disobeying the court suspension and it would use facilities owned by the Catalan government so as not to put city hall officials at risk either. 

He put out a call for volunteers, saying that 20,000 would be needed; within two days he had over 40,000.  Several hundred city halls added to the available facilities by donating their own facilities for use that day. 

This meant that going to vote was an act of civil disobedience.  The Spanish government was too circumspect to send in the army (as some wanted), but they had alternative troops: threats, legal intimidation, trying to discredit or eliminate those who are active and important to the movement, and finally, on the day, the attempted sabotage of the computer and phone systems of the Catalan government and the grassroots citizen group that was organizing the event (it is not yet determined who was behind that and will be interesting to find out – but how many people could afford the more than 100,000 euros that the professionally handled sabotage would have cost?  I wonder if it was taxpayers’ money…).

Over 2 million people went to vote on 9 November.  There was a campaign by the grassroots organizing group that showed a famous person holding the photo of an important person, now deceased, but who would have wanted to go to the polls to vote.  The Madrid press made fun of the campaign saying that dead people were going to vote. 

My friend Trini said that she was going to vote for her father, who died about a year ago and who would have wanted to vote Yes.  My Catalan teacher told me she cried as she left the polling station, thinking of her grandfather who had gone into exile after the Civil War.  She was voting for him.  Pep Guardiola, the football coach, flew in from Munich to vote.  People flew in from much farther away too.  They could have found polling stations closer to where they were, there were 14 scattered around the world, but they wanted to come here and be with their friends and family and the rest of their community when they went to the polls.  It was a little like Thanksgiving but without the turkey.  Because they could not use the usual polling places, there were fewer of them and the lines to vote were longer.  But people didn’t mind and there was a good atmosphere. 

The two major political parties in Spain had been against any vote.  The PP party did everything it could to prevent it; the Socialists told their followers not to vote because it was illegal.

The day after the vote the Spanish government began their cynical campaign of belittling the results – of belittling the Catalan people and what, against all odds, they had just achieved.  This was not a referendum, not even a consultation – it was a joke. It was not democratic.   It did not have all the required legal guarantees; not many people went to vote; if more had gone the No vote would have been bigger – would have been the majority, etc. 

This was not a referendum because the Spanish government would not agree to one and it did not have all the legal guarantees of a government-run vote because the Spanish government made that illegal by sending it to court.  If they really wanted to know how many would vote Yes and how many No, all they had to do is allow a legal vote, campaign for No, and encourage people to go and vote -- like Britain did with Scotland. 

As exciting and emotional as all this was, the saga is not over yet.  Now we are waiting to see if criminal charges will be brought against Catalan President Mas or anyone else involved with the organization of last week's voting.

President Mas will probably be calling for early Catalan parliamentary elections that will be a plebiscite where either banded together in groups or independently, the political parties will run on a single issue – that of independence – yes or no.  That will be the real vote, in lieu of a referendum, and I hope it happens sooner rather than later.  With all the dancing around and musical chairs going on – which party will team up with which, or will they team up at all? -- the weeks or months leading up to it promise to be yet another emotional challenge.

These Are The Times That Try Catalan Souls

Some politicians, commentators and pundits have tried to make it complicated, but it isn’t.  In a democracy people can vote.  They can’t be limited as to what they can vote on.  The government of a democracy can’t do as China does, to say what you can vote on or what list you must choose from. 

The Catalans are determined to vote.  The more Spain tries to block them, the more determined they are. I think at this point in time, Catalunya is lucky to have the president it has.  President Mas isn’t interested in putting on a show or engaging in civil disobedience that the media would probably enjoy.  He promised he would provide voting boxes and ballots, and he has found a way to do that.

Spain wouldn’t allow a referendum.  A referendum is a vote that is binding, so that if, for instance the public voted yes, they wanted to separate from Spain, that would put in motion the negotiations between the Catalan and the Spanish governments to work out the terms of the separation.  That is what would have happened with Scotland and Great Britain if the Scots had voted yes.  But they didn’t.  So never mind. 

Being denied a referendum, at the end of September, the Catalan Parliament passed a law call La Llei de Consultes no referendaries (Law of Consultations).  This gave the Catalan government the power to call for a “consulta no vinculada i no referendaria” a non-binding consultation – not a referendum -- when it thought necessary to poll the public on matters that concern them. They had resorted to this language and this law because of the ban on a referendum by the Spanish government.

Having the Law of Consultations in place, on Saturday 27 September, President Mas signed a decree calling for a non-binding consultation to be held on 9 November 2014 and specifying the question that would be voted on, as had been agreed upon by the Catalan parliament.

The following day, 29 September (a Sunday – normally a day to rest and enjoy a paella) the Spanish council of ministers met to impugn the Catalan law of consultations.  Their impugnation was delivered to the Spanish Constitutional Court on Monday.  In an unprecedented move, the Court convened that same day (at lightning speed -- it would normally take months) and agreed to take it under consideration.  That automatically meant the law and the decree were suspended.

Then, on 13 October, President Mas announced that there would indeed be a consultation on 9 November.  This would not be the same consultation called for by the decree.  He called it a participatory process and said it was based on another legal framework, one that he did not specify but said already existed.

This put the Catalan political parties into a tizzy.  Four of them (with a majority in the Catalan parliament) had agreed on the question and the date.  They had passed the law of consultations, and they had agreed on the decree.  Now all of a sudden, President Mas came out with a new game to play.

The reason he did this was that if they went ahead with the consultation as originally planned, it would mean disobeying the suspension imposed by the Constitutional Court.  It would not only be the politicians who would be disobeying, it would be all the public employees who organized the vote – those who prepared the eligible voters lists, those who set up the physical spaces, those who counted the votes, etc .  Any government employee who worked in any way on the consultation could be charged with illegal activity by the Spanish state.

At first the parties were in an uproar because what they had all agreed upon had been changed.  One of them even broke down during a radio interview.  He said it was stress and fatigue, but I personally think that he, more than any of the others, wishes for the independence of Catalunya and wants it to happen sooner rather than later. 

But after just a few days, they have reassembled, if not as strongly together as before, nevertheless they have all come out in support of the current set up for the new participatory process.  All but the Greens.  Maybe today or tomorrow they will issue a statement otherwise, but so far the leaders have said that they will not go to vote on 9 November.  Instead they will hold demonstrations of protest and they encourage the public to attend.

This is one of the most disappointing items that has come out of all this drama.  The only thing that counts is people voting.  There have already been several demonstrations – one of over a million, a second of over 1.5 million, and the most recent of 1.8 million.  Now what the Catalan political leaders need to see, what the Spanish government needs to see, and what the world needs to see is how many people will go to vote (or participate) and what percentage will vote for independence.  Having another demonstration will only detract from the issue at hand which is voting.

One of the most interesting and encouraging things in all of this process is that those four Catalan political parties have been able, up to now, to put their political differences aside to work for a common goal – the right to vote, and they are doing so because of the expressed desires of the Catalan public – left and right.  Those parties span the political spectrum and include CiU the Catalan right/business-oriented wing (the party of President Mas); ICV the Greens; ERC, the Catalan left (that has always been pro-independence), and the CUP, a small, radical left-wing independentist  party.

The Catalan left and right wing works together

Working together, a wide spectrum of Catalan
political parties agreed on the Law of Consultations

People really want to have this vote.  President Mas called for volunteers to do the work so as not to put public employees in legal jeopardy.  He asked for 20,000 volunteers.  Within four days over 30,000 signed up.

President Mas maintains that the consultation as originally decreed was non-binding and this consultation/participatory process is the essentially the same.  Instead of lists of eligible voters at the polls, which is the usual procedure in Spain, each person will have to show their I.D. (Spain has national picture I.D. cards).  The tables will be manned by volunteers and the data from the I.D. card will be cross-checked with census data.

How the votes will be collected and counted and who will be there to ensure that there is no corruption in the process has not been disclosed.  President Mas is playing this new game with his cards held very close to his chest.  He is determined that there is no loophole through which the Spanish government can find something to denounce.  Spanish President Rajoy today did indeed announce that his government is looking to see if this new participatory process, which he said is just a cover-up for a referendum and is anti-democratic, can be considered illegal and sent to the Constitutional Court.  But President Mas says that since there is no published law and no official decree, (and since the court is a constitutional and not a criminal court), there is nothing concrete that the Constitutional Court can base a judgment on.

The daily unfolding of this political spectacle has kept me engaged.  I’ve been off my regular TV diet, favoring afternoon AND evening news and anything that gets announced in between on the internet.  There is a peaceful revolution going on in Catalunya where the people are determined to exercise their democratic right.

No Vote in Spain

This has been a very animated week here in Catalunya.  As the day nears for the vote on a referendum to decide whether or not Catalans want to remain part of Spain, the pace of the moves on both sides quickens and intensifies.  You might think that “both sides” refers to both sides of the question to be voted.  And you would be wrong.  “Both sides” refers to the Catalan government that is committed to its citizens to hold the vote on one side, and the Spanish government that is committed to blocking it on the other.  Because Spain is supposedly a modern (western!) country and part of the European Union, one might wonder why voting would be an issue.  In order to be admitted to the EU a country has to demonstrate that it is a democracy, and Spain managed to be accepted.  Now that it is a member, the EU doesn’t really want to be bothered about whether or not it is democratic and whether or not it prohibits its citizens from voting and telling their elected representatives unequivocally what they want.

The last few days went like this.  On 19 September, a week after 1.8 million people demonstrated in Barcelona saying they wanted to vote, the Catalan parliament approved a law that allowed for the people to be “consulted” and called for the consultation to be held on 9 November.  It was passed by the overwhelming majority of 106 to 28.  A consultation differs from a referendum in that it does not become a law (as would a proposition voted on an American state ballot).  It tells the government (the Catalan government) what the voters want in reference to a subject of importance to them.  It is then up to the government to negotiate if necessary and to implement their wish.

In its concept, it is more democratic than the usual procedure of voting for a person (here you vote for a party) and hoping that the person or party will do what was promised in a campaign.  When you vote in a consultation, you are being consulted by your government; you are telling all your representatives exactly what you do or do not want them to do on a specific issue. 

Oriol Junkeras (ERC), representing the Catalan left
and Artur Mas (CiU) representing the Catalan right:
Two unlikely allies who have set their ideological
differences aside to work for a common goal

On Saturday 29 September Artur Mas, President of the Generalitat of Catalunya, signed the Law of Consultations.

On Sunday 30 September Spanish President Rajoy met with his cabinet, not to discuss how they might discuss this crisis with the Catalan government, but to take steps to block the Consultation.

The complaint, saying that the Law of Consultations was unconstitutional, was filed with the Spanish Constitutional Court on Monday morning.  Not scheduled to meet, the members of the Court flew to their chambers, held a special emergency meeting, and on Monday afternoon the Court agreed to consider it and that immediately suspended the new Catalan Law of Consultations.

Given the great speed by which these high-level bodies met and acted whereas this type of thing usually takes weeks or months to be looked at by the Court, President Mas made the comment that it was all done at supersonic speed.  One might also wonder how it was that the Court, that had never been called to a meeting so quickly, agreed to meet that same day.  It looks to some as if the Constitutional Court simply takes its orders from the Spanish government.  This could be substantiated by the fact that the Court’s President, Francisco Perez de los Cabos, was a member of the governing party (PP) while he was a judge (he later quit his party membership) while he was a judge, even though the Spanish Constitution forbids it.  He was not dismissed.  Why would the PP want to dismiss one of their own?

On Tuesday, the Catalan government temporarily suspended preparations for the Consultation, the issue to be discussed by the political parties in favor of holding the Consultation later in the week. 

On Wednesday, the Catalan government filed an appeal to the Constitutional Court requesting that the suspension be lifted.

It is not surprising that, although it is already Friday, there has been no response from the Court.   In fact, it isn’t clear when they will meet to consider this appeal.  Some things do not happen at supersonic speed.

After writing and posting this, I read a special announcement.  The Catalan political parties that support the right to vote finished their 7-hour meeting.  They include CIU, the Catalan right wing, ERC, the Catalan left wing, the Greens, and CUP the radicals (for lack of a better definition -- they continue to baffle me).  They pretty much cover the Catalan political spectrum (minus the socialists who don't seem to think that voting is a fundamental right in a democracy) and have all agreed that they will go ahead with the Consultation.  They say that voting is a basic democratic right and neither the central government in Madrid nor the Constitutional Court has the right to prohibit it.  

Further reading:
From the Harvard Political Review: http://harvardpolitics.com/world/catalonia-contention/ 

OpEd from the LA Times: http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-cole-catalonia-independence-20141001-story.html