With a somewhat more relaxed atmosphere than the one that was felt on April 24, when they met a few days after the espionage with Pegasus was uncovered, Laura Vilagrà and Félix Bolaños met again this morning for an hour and a half at the Palau de la Generalitat to advance in the reestablishment of relations between the Spanish and Catalan governments. The face-to-face date between Pedro Sánchez and Pere Aragonès has come out of this meeting. It will be on July 15, just after the nation’s debate in Congress, and it is expected that after smoothing things over, the third meeting of the dialogue table will take place, which has not been convened since September 15 of last year.
But today’s meeting between the Minister of the Presidency and her counterpart in Moncloa has also borne fruit of a commitment so that the contacts between the Government and the central Executive are carried out with “security” and with “respect for fundamental rights”, as has announced Bolaños. A periphrastic way to express implicitly that guarantees of non-repetition of espionage will be given, as the Catalan Executive has claimed on other occasions with the dots in the i’s.
Bolaños has highlighted the “constructive tone” and that important agreements have been reached to “strengthen the institutional and political relationship” between both governments. An agreement that is based on what was already agreed on June 22 and that goes along the lines of “an uncompromising defense of dialogue.” He has remarked that the commitment to seek political and shared solutions that are lasting has been reaffirmed, “instead of a judicialized policy that chronicizes conflicts and leads nowhere”.
Without failing to bear in mind the demand for a referendum, the Government’s objective is also to move towards “the dejudicialization” of politics, or, in the words of the independence movement, towards the end of repression. Aragonès hopes to obtain a commitment from Sánchez in this regard. In the background, for example, the number of cases that may involve prison sentences for pro-independence charges in the investigating courts 13 and 18 of Barcelona, ??or in the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) for 1-O.
The meeting between the two presidents is a demand by Aragonès that he expressed shortly after Citizen Lab made public the espionage of some sixty people from the pro-independence circle. The news caused the Head of the Government to freeze political contacts. The thaw began two weeks ago, when Bolaños and Vilagrà met for the second time at Moncloa after the scandal was uncovered.
The meeting between Sánchez and Aragonès could be followed shortly after by a new meeting of the dialogue table. In fact, the President of the Government already pointed out the possibility of it happening this July in a recent interview in El País. From the Government they have not ruled it out and you also believe that it could be feasible, taking into account that the debate of the nation in the Congress of Deputies will be held on July 12, 13 and 14, and that after this a period in which Moncloa does not believe that there are external political factors that could be conditioned by contacts with the independentistas.
Be that as it may, the fact that the meeting between the Minister and the Minister was somewhat more relaxed than the one held in April is demonstrated by two facts: Vilagrà received Bolaños at the gates of Palau, and once they sat down in his office on the couch. In the first meeting, the Generalitat staged a much more cutting atmosphere, with both leaders posing before the press sitting at each of the ends of the table that the head of the Presidency has in her office.
However, today the Minister has placed a significant photo between the two: an image of November 23 with Vilagrà posing together with the former Ministers of the Presidency. Among them, Jorid Turull, general secretary of Junts per Catalunya and who today the Minister of Culture and Sports, Miquel Iceta, has placed in the foreground by agreeing to be present at the next meeting of the dialogue table. However, Bolaños has amended Iceta and has assured that Moncloa “is committed to the fact that the members of the meetings are logically from those governments.”
That members who do not belong to the Government were in this space created controversy. Aragonès appeared at a press conference shortly before the second meeting of the dialogue table to explain his refusal to allow Jordi Sànchez, Jordi Turull and Míriam Nogueras, all from Junts, but without being part of the Government, to be part of it. Isabel Rodríguez, government spokesperson, also responded with an “absolutely no” to the question of whether Moncloa would have accepted them.
