Executing your elected mandate is not embezzlement. Calling a spade a fish does not make it a fish, <i>even if the courts of law in your state agree with you</i

Executing your elected mandate is not embezzlement. Calling a spade a fish does not make it a fish, <i>even if the courts of law in your state agree with you</i>. If the government of Catalonia was not competent to hold a referendum, they should have been dismissed. (The central government in Spain retains that authority.) If it was not politically possible to dismiss them, then spending public resources on a policy which is the raison d'etre for the governing parties but which is outside the competence of that government should merely be considered a cost of the distribution of power. Other democracies constantly have disputes about whether such a use of funds is within the competence of a specific government. And they find that, no, it is not within the competence of a specific government. And they manage to cope without charging anyone with embezzlement despite the money having been irrecoverably spent. If this is too much for Spain, then Spain should remove the statutes of autonomy.