MADRID (AP) — Spain's highest court says the Constitution recognizes Spain as the country's only nation, dealing a blow to efforts by the northeastern region of Catalonia to assume that status.
The Constitutional Court says referring to the region around Barcelona as a nation is "a perfectly legitimate idea" but has no legal basis.
The full ruling came out Friday, a day before a planned multitudinous protest in Barcelona that has as its slogan "We decide, we are a nation."
The court was ruling on an appeal of certain articles of a 2006 charter for Catalonia in 2006 that grants the powerful region plenty of new powers but which Spain’s conservative opposition Popular Party alleged undermined the idea of Spain as a unified state.
