The dialogue table will not meet at least this year due to the looming electoral cycle, but this hibernation is not an obstacle for the central and Catalan governments to maintain contacts at the highest level, such as the meeting on Thursday between Pere Aragonès and the minister from the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, advanced by La Vanguardia; an appointment that served to address management issues on the Catalan agenda.
Aragonès demanded from Ireland – where he went after the meeting with Bolaños to meet yesterday with the leader of Sinn Féin, Mary Lou McDonald – “not to take steps back” at the dialogue table as he believes that “there is risk” at this time. Aware that Moncloa does not have on the horizon to repeat the bilateral meetings of this forum, the president recalled that agreements have been signed that “must be complied with”.
However, the Government considers the dialogue table amortized. The minister spokesperson for the Executive, Isabel Rodríguez, spoke yesterday about this forum in the past tense, stressing that “it has served to recover relations”, but another appointment is not scheduled because relations “are already normalized”.
Rodríguez placed the meeting with Bolaños in the normal “institutional and personal contacts” and pointed out that nothing was resolved that has an incidence to share with the public.
Aragonès urged the Government to comply with the agreements on dejudicialization that were reached in the negotiation space.
In this sense, he assured that the dialogue between Moncloa and the Government is “permanent” and reiterated the concern of the Republicans about the procedural situation of Josep Maria Jové and Lluís Salvadó, former senior officials of the Generalitat to whom the Prosecutor’s Office requests seven and six years in jail, respectively, for crimes of aggravated embezzlement, disobedience and prevarication for 1-O. Hence the claims of the president.
Together, for his part, he took advantage of the meeting held between Aragonès and Bolaños to attack “a normal meeting between tripartite partners” and demand again that Aragonès “show his face” and explain the results of the dialogue table, especially the Penal reform “fiasco”.
