Regarding Catalonia's autonomy statute, this is not something that the Catalan parliament can do on their own. They submitted a draft to the national Parliament and it is not being debated and amended. If it is passed, it will have the rank of Ley Orgánica, second only to the Constitution itself. As such, it cannot contradict the constitution. It would then be possible to file an unconstitutionality appeal before the Constitutional Court, whose ruling would stand. So Lt. Gen. Mena is out of line in any case.

It may be of interest in this case that Mena was due to retire in march, so he may have felt that he did not have anything to lose, or he might really not have realised the impact that his words would have.

tens of millions of people stand to see their lives ruined because the bureaucrats at the ECB don't understand introductory economics -- Dean Baker