Junts per Catalunya considers that the criticisms of the president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, for the negotiation between PSOE and Junts per Catalunya with a verification team that will be coordinated by the Salvadoran diplomat Francisco Vélez Galindo “come very close to xenophobia.” The popular leader pointed out this Sunday that it is an “unbearable humiliation” that “a Salvadoran expert in guerrillas” plays that role and the post-convergents point out that “disqualifying based on origin is xenophobia.” “We think these are unfortunate demonstrations,” the spokesperson and vice president of the group, Josep Rius, said at a press conference this Monday.
“We regret the reaction and the statements of the PP, they come very close to xenophobia. It is normal that they are bothered by the meeting in Switzerland because it internationalizes the conflict, but disqualifying because of the origin is xenophobia,” said the post-convergent deputy, who in his intervention has highlighted the negotiation forum between JxCat and the socialists that started on Saturday in Geneva while calling the dialogue table that the Republicans agreed with the PSOE in the previous legislature “sterile.”
“At Junts we confirm that more progress has been made in this last month than in previous years. We can confirm that there is an amnesty law in process, registered, an effective negotiation framework in Switzerland with an international verification mechanism and it is in process of recognition of the official status of Catalan in Europe”, summarized Rius, who has also added to these milestones the launch of two investigative commissions in the Congress of Deputies, the one related to the Catalunya operation and the State sewers and another about the August 2017 attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils.
In any case, regarding the negotiation, the Junts spokesperson has avoided giving more details and has reiterated that there needs to be discretion for it to bear fruit. What he has highlighted is that “the legislature will advance” in the Lower House as long as “there is progress” in that forum. Regarding the figure who will coordinate the verification, the diplomat Francisco Galindo Vélez, Carles Puigdemont’s team highlights that he is “a renowned specialist in conflict resolution.”
Regarding the controversy surrounding the vice president of the party and second secretary of the Parliament’s Bureau, Aurora Madaula, who from the lectern of the chamber accused her “comrades” of the party of “silent violence”, Rius has limited himself to saying that the guarantees committee addresses the matter “with the maximum possible guarantees and with discretion”, without issuing any assessment on what the management’s judgment is on this matter.
On the other hand, given the possibility that the Government of the Generalitat will reduce the personal income tax in the lowest section, Junts celebrate that the Executive of Pere Aragonès now intends to adopt one of the proposals that the post-convergent formation put on the table a year ago in budget negotiation. “We welcome ERC to the tax reduction. Last year the Government flatly refused, now we have to see if it is a firm proposal or not,” Rius assessed.
