“We see the Catalan question as internal to the state, the society and the people of Spain,” Augusto Santos Silva told a joint hearing of parliament's committees on European affairs and the budget. “We respect the Spanish constitution and we do not comment on court decisions taken by the competent authorities.”

For Portugal’s government, he said, “the constitution and the law are the appropriate framework to deal with the question [of Catalonia’s status], which exists and has social and political aspects that no one should downplay or much less forget.”

It is within Spain’s constitution, he stressed, that “the responsible dialogue between the relevant political agents and institutions” must be carried on.

Portugal, the minister said, is monitoring the situation “with close attention and very carefully”, because it believes that it is “also sensitive for various Portuguese interests: interests as neighbours, interests with the Portuguese wo live in Catalonia and interests of the very dense economic and social relationship that exists between Portuguese institutions and agents and Spanish and, among them, Catalan agents.”

Santos Silva was replying to a question from the Left Block, whose Isabel Pires had said that the regional elections scheduled for 21 December in Catalonia “have no minimum guarantees of democracy”, given the imprisonment of the members of the regional government. Portugal, she argued, “should have taken a stronger position, because it is a matter of defending rights”.