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Madrid's Shuttering of Catalonian Embassies (Jordi Molins, Spain, 12/08/18 4:43 am)

John Eipper asked on December 7th: "Jordi, has Madrid shuttered all the Catalonian embassies? (...) How many embassies did Catalonia have in the first place?"

Madrid, after taking over the Catalan government, shuttered all Catalan embassies (New York, Washington, London, Brussels, Berlin, Paris, Rome, Geneva, Lisbon, Vienna, Warsaw, Copenhagen and Zagreb) on November 30, 2017.

Note: the "embassies" were not really embassies, but just Catalan government organisations helping Catalans abroad, especially in export/import (and quite efficient at that task).

The Catalan elections were scheduled on December 21, 2017 (by decision of Madrid). Originally, Madrid said they were not going to take government decisions. However, they suddenly fired the 33 people working for the Catalan government overseas. This action had a cost of 2 million euros. They could have just waited 21 days for a new government to take a decision on the future of those embassies, couldn't they?

JE comments:  Jordi, some sources say the Brussels embassy/delegation remains open--is this information still current?  See below:

https://thediplomatinspain.com/en/2017/10/government-closes-catalan-embassies-except-brussels/

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