The Latest: Catalan parliament to hold key meeting Thursday
By Associated Press
Oct 23, 2017 4:19 AM CDT
People gather in front of the Palau Generalitat in Barcelona, Spain awaiting for Catalan President Carles Puigdemont's speech Saturday, Oct. 21, 2017. Spain announced an unprecedented plan Saturday to sack Catalonia's separatist leaders, install its own people in their place and call a new local election,...   (Associated Press)

BARCELONA, Spain (AP) — The Latest on Catalonia's effort to break away from Spain and the Spanish government's response (all times local):

11:15 a.m.

A lawmaker with the ruling Catalan separatist coalition says the regional parliament will hold a Thursday plenary meeting that many fear will become a cover for a vote on declaring independence from Spain.

Catalan president Carles Puigdemont has asked the parliament to convene a debate and vote on how to respond to the central Spanish government's plan to take direct control of the northeastern region.

Puigdemont's speech on Saturday was seen as a veiled threat of formalizing an ambiguous declaration of independence earlier this month that he declared suspended in order to earn time for negotiations.

The Spanish government says that no dialogue is possible with independence on the table and is maneuvering to sack all the Catalan top officials and call a snap regional election in the next six months.

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10:15 a.m.

A far-left pro-independence party in Catalonia is calling for "mass civil disobedience" in the region following the Spanish government's unprecedented move to trigger a section of the constitution allowing the central government to intervene in the running of the region.

In an announcement Monday, the CUP, a key ally in the regional parliament to the minority ruling separatist coalition, described the move by Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy as "the greatest aggression against the civil, individual and collective rights of the Catalan people" since the dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco, who died in 1975.

The party said the move will be met by civil disobedience as a form of non-violent resistance. It said it would elaborate on what form of action this would take later in the week.