“We celebrate that now Junts has opted for the path of negotiation that President Aragonès himself has defended from the first minute of the legislature.” The battle to claim any success between ERC and Junts is in full swing and the Government, through its spokesperson, Patrícia Plaja, has reacted in this way to Carles Puigdemont’s conference from Brussels, in which he has set the conditions that must be met before addressing a negotiation for an investiture as Prime Minister.
Plaja has boasted this afternoon at the press conference after the meeting of the Executive Council of the strategy of the Catalan Executive and the Republican Left. “It is the most effective way to move towards the end of the repression”, but above all, “to move towards resolving the political conflict with the Spanish State” through a referendum.
At the Brussels conference, the former president set out the conditions for Junts per Catalunya to begin negotiating an investiture of the president of the Government. Four, he has put on the table: recognition of the political conflict in Catalonia, amnesty, the creation of a verification mechanism that could well be a mediator, and conceiving international treaties as a limit for negotiation.
“We fully share the stated objectives”, explained Plaja, not without failing to remark that they are the same objectives that the Government has defended. Moreover, the spokeswoman has gone so far as to say that the objectives “are coincident with” those of Aragonès. “They are not just shared, but almost identical,” she clarified.
If now it is possible for the amnesty to be practically done, it is, according to the Government, thanks to the fact that the process “does not start from scratch, but rather is gradual”. In other words, the ground has been fertilized with the explicit recognition by the PSOE Executive that there is a political conflict -sealed in the document creating the dialogue table- or the repeal of the crime of sedition. “Now the context allows one more step to be taken. It is a gradual process that the Spanish government must be dragged into,” Plaja explained.
In any case, for the spokesperson the arithmetic to invest president – ??Pedro Sánchez can only opt today for the support of the Catalan and Basque independentists and nationalists – works in favor of ERC and Junts. “There is a golden opportunity for the independence movement to join forces and together force the Spanish Government towards amnesty and the right to self-determination,” said Plaja. A statement that in turn is a new call to Jordi Turull and Laura Borràs to coordinate.
However, the Government is clear that now “it is up to the Government of Pedro Sánchez to lose fear and make a move” and show, in his opinion, a real will to advance in resolving the political conflict.
Two ERC representatives attended the Puigdemont conference: Teresa Jordà and Francesc-Marc Álvaro. The Republican has addressed the media in terms similar to those of Plaja and has applauded that Junts is opening up to negotiations after four years of doing so by the ERC “alone” in Madrid. “”When there are adversities, what you do is negotiate with the adversary”, Jordà opined to reaffirm the strategy of Oriol Junqueras’ men before highlighting “the historic opportunity” offered by parliamentary arithmetic.
