Spain's foreign minister says Catalonia's leaders will not be arrested

Spain's foreign minister has promised that no arrests will be made when the Catalan government is dismissed as soon as this week.

Alfonso Dastis said Sunday on BBC that there were no plans to arrest anyone when Spain ousts Catalan President Carles Puigdemont and his government.

The ouster is part of planned measures up for a Spanish Senate vote Friday, including taking control of the regional police force and public television and radio channels. The government's plans, based on a powerful constitutional tool, are likely to meet resistance from the Catalonian regional government.

"All the government is trying to do is reinstate the legal order, restore the constitution but also the Catalan rules and proceed from there," Dastis said. He declined to clarify whether Spain would send in the national police or troops to restore order to the region. He said he hoped Catalonian citizens would ignore any orders from regional police. "Everything will be fine, there will be law and order, peaceful life and normal coexistence which is what we're after."

Following widespread condemnation of images showing Spanish police forcibly removing people from polling booths as Catalonians voted in the illegal referendum in independence Oct. 1, Dastis said some of the images were "fake," adding that there had been "a lot of alternative facts and fake news here."

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(Maria Tadeo contributed to this report.)