The president of Catalonia says he tried to find a way for a dialog and thought that elections would guarantee that the Spanish government would not suspend the autonomy. He said that he did not receive such a guarantee, thus he does not call elections.
EUR/USD remains under pressure and slips to a new low of 1.1690.
According to Puigdemont, we can understand that calling elections was not enough for the Spanish government to step back from invoking Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution.
Thus, he calls on the Catalan parliament to proceed with what it has to do. They are convening at 18:00 local time (16:00 GMT and may declare Catalonia as an independent republic, something that nobody will recognize.
This is different from what seemed to be a done deal earlier and serves as a worsening of the situation.
Earlier in the day, reports came out that Puigdemont will call elections instead of declaring independence. This sent the IBEX 35 some 2% higher as hopes for a “ceasefire” emerged. The Spanish government was expected to react.
The bigger mover of the euro today was the ECB. They announced that bond buys will be halved to 30 billion euros from January and run through September. They left the door open for continuing the bond-buys beyond that date. That sent EUR/USD down from around 1.18 to just under 1.17.
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