The warning from the spokesman of Spain’s ruling party stopped hearts across Catalonia: If Carles Puigdemont declared independence, he might “end up like the man who declared it 83 years ago”.
That man was Lluis Companys, the Catalan president who was imprisoned and later executed by the dictatorship of General Francisco Franco.
On Sunday his death on October 15, 1940, will be marked by a march to Barcelona’s Montjuic Castle, the site of the public act of punishment which still rankles deep in Catalans’ historical consciousness.
Accompanied by his entire cabinet, Mr Puigdemont will lay a wreath at the tomb of Companys, whose reported cry “For Catalonia!” as he faced the firing squad immortalized him as a martyr to the modern day independence movement.
As outrage grew over his words on Monday, Pablo Casado, the spokesman for Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s Popular Party (PP), claimed he had not been referring to Companys’ execution but instead his earlier imprisonment for “rebellion” after he declared a Catalan state within a Spanish federal republic.
But he was unapologetic: the only ones who were “nationalist, xenophobic, exclusionary and totalitarian,” the only ones “fuelling the violence”, were the Catalan separatists, he insisted.
As the Catalonia crisis deepens, nationalist tempers are flaring and civil war insults flying in both directions, polarizing Spain further into two distinct realities where one side’s traitor is the other’s hero.
“They criticize our schools and the way we teach history,” said Elisenda Paluzie, economy professor at the University of Barcelona. “Who? Those who have political leaders who ignore the shooting of Companys.”
As long simmering resentments come to the surface, sights that many regarded as consigned to history are once again being witnessed.
Members of Franco’s Falange - small but increasingly active - perform the fascist salute and sing the dictatorship anthem La Cara del Sol at protests against Catalan independence.
On Thursday, as Spain celebrated its national day, two far right groups fought running battles in Barcelona’s Plaza Cataluña during a pro-unity rally.
Pro-independence Catalans increasingly recur to cries of fascism and dictatorship, with those who oppose secession often branded “Franquistas”.
The parents of Albert Rivera, leader of the centre right, anti-independence party Ciudadanos, saw their business outside Barcelona graffitied with the slogan “This is not your land”. Both sides report physical attacks and even death threats.
In this raw and febrile environment, hopes of dialogue - always slim - fade further with each seething exchange.
Mr Puigdemont has suspended Catalonia’s declaration of independence to allow for talks, while Mr Rajoy holds out the prospect of national constitutional reform if he retracts the declaration entirely.
But bitterness and mistrust have left many on both sides feeling they are past the point of no return, and the suspension of Catalonia's autonomy - with all its potential for confrontation - looms.
Even Spanish security forces - enraged by the backlash against the violent referendum day crackdown - are not above the fray. One police union this week tweeted a menacing photo of masked agents armed with submachine guns, with the caption: “Against the putschists.. let’s talk?”
Experts attribute this poisonous dynamic in part due to Spain’s failure to deal with the legacy of the dictatorship, hastily swept under an amnesty law after the death of Franco in 1977.
As Carlos Hernandez, a journalist and author, noted in a commentary in El Diario on Friday, Spain is “the only European country which continues honouring fascist genocides, stopping relatives from recovering the bodies of the victims, allowing homages to those who abducted our liberties for 40 years, tolerating that there are still streets and plazas (named) in their honor, and even justifying that their leaders are interred in great mausoleums like the Valley of the Fallen.”
Göran Lindblad, president of the Platform of European Memory and Conscience, said Spain needed to take steps to address the lingering pain of the dictatorship years, adding: ”There are always problems when a totalitarian past has not been properly managed.”
As for Mr Casado’s conjuring of Companys’ fate, he said: "It is not responsible to talk about executions in a democracy."