Spain’s government announced on Tuesday that it has decided to ask the country’s Constitutional Court to block the debate, in the Catalan parliament, of a text calling for the region to be declared independent.

The office of the Catalan parliament accepted on February 20 to consider a “People’s Legislative Initiative” (ILP) promoted by a small, extra-parliamentary party, “Catalan Solidarity for Independence”. The text asked the parliament to unilaterally declare the independence of Catalonia.

Carles Puigdemont’s party “Together for Catalonia” (JxCat) voted in favor of debating this initiative while the other separatist party, the more moderate Democratic Left of Catalonia (ERC), abstained.

Pedro Sanchez’s government “requests the cancellation of the examination of this proposal” and its freezing “immediately,” Justice Minister Felix Bolaños said at a press conference after the weekly cabinet meeting.

This intervention by the central government comes less than two weeks after parliament voted for an amnesty that would benefit almost 400 people who had been convicted or prosecuted for their role in Catalonia’s 2017 secession attempt. Among them were and Puigdemont. The amnesty, to be ratified in late May or early June, was the price demanded by the two separatist Catalan parties to support Sanchez’s government, as without them it would not secure a majority in parliament.

However, both parties, but mainly JxCat, did not renounce their struggle for independence and the holding of a referendum on the self-determination of Catalonia.

Bolaños reiterated that the government will oppose this plan and that he does not want “the isolation of Catalonia from Spain and the rest of Europe”. He commented that the proposed law promoted by this initiative “divides society, causes tensions”.

The government’s request to the Constitutional Court is based on an article of the Constitution that gives Madrid the right to freeze measures or the review of measures by an autonomous community, with immediate effect.