“There is going to be a Government in Catalonia and this legislature has more than three years left,” the Executive spokesperson, Pilar Alegría, concluded forcefully yesterday. And, also firmly, she rejected all pressure from the Junts candidate, Carles Puigdemont, to threaten Pedro Sánchez’s mandate if the PSC does not facilitate his investiture as president of the Generalitat. “There are issues that, honestly, don’t matter. Nobody buys them. Because the Catalans have spoken with resounding clarity,” Alegría warned.
The Catalans expressed themselves at the polls on Sunday, alleged the minister spokesperson, and conveyed a “resounding message” to “open a new time in Catalonia”, after the electoral victory of the PSC leader, Salvador Illa. “From then on, everyone is free to say what they want. But the Catalans have been very clear,” Alegría insisted, ruling out any option for Puigdemont to be sworn in.
“The Government of Catalonia is going to decide in Catalonia,” the minister stressed, just as Sánchez himself stated the day before, rejecting any maneuver by Junts. “It is evident that there is a winning force, which has concentrated a very majority support in Catalonia,” said Alegría, referring to the PSC. And this party, she stressed, “is responsible for starting the different conversations with the rest of the political formations” in search of Illa’s investiture.
“We have no doubt that there will be a Government in Catalonia,” Alegría insisted. “And this legislature has at least three years left,” he concluded. In any case, the minister assured that the Executive’s intention is to continue dialogue with all parliamentary forces, also with Junts and ERC, to continue agreeing on laws and initiatives that paint a “very positive” outlook for citizens in job creation, growth economic and tourism and foreign investment in Spain.
“The legislature is going very well, in economic growth, job creation and expansion of rights,” they justify in Moncloa. And they assure that the negotiations for the investiture of a Catalan president will only take place in Catalonia.
In Moncloa, in fact, they do not contemplate calling new meetings of the open dialogue tables with Junts and ERC until the electoral framework is cleared and the governability of Catalonia is resolved. They consider it logical to suspend these periodic meetings until they know, to begin with, who their interlocutors will be in both formations.
Alegría invited all political forces to make a “serene” reading of the electoral results in Catalonia. Also to the Popular Party, after Alberto Núñez Feijóo warned that the process has not yet died because Sánchez, in his opinion, needs it alive to continue governing.
“Let them clarify themselves,” the minister warned in the face of the contradictory speech that she attributed to Feijóo and some territorial leaders of the PP, such as Alejandro Fernández or Juanma Moreno Bonilla, who have already seen the process concluded. “Those who did not know how to provide a solution to the greatest political and territorial crisis, today still do not have a project for Catalonia,” she criticized. “To Feijóo’s chagrin, Spain is neither sinking nor breaking up, on the contrary, Spain is advancing, growing and opening a new stage of dialogue and reunion,” he replied to the PP leader.
This way, Sánchez himself can transfer it directly to Feijóo next Wednesday. The President of the Government will appear in Congress on May 22, at his own request, to report on the last European Council, the negotiations on Gibraltar, and also his contacts with different international leaders to recognize Palestine as a State. Although the Moncloa avoids confirming it, it is possible that the Council of Ministers of the day before, May 21, will approve this recognition of the Palestinian State.
Sánchez will take advantage of this appearance in Congress to address, cumulatively in the same session, the PP’s demand for explanations about the Koldo case and the alleged “conflict of interest” that they attribute to the professional activity of the president’s wife, Begoña Gómez. . “Lies and hoaxes have been published non-stop, and it is time to stop it,” they say in Moncloa.
