“The answer to overcome the political conflict cannot be a self-determination referendum, nor can we stay as we are,” Pedro Sánchez warned, shortly before meeting the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, this afternoon at the Palau during the interview. who has starred alongside Jordi Basté in ‘El món a RAC1’. The President of the Government has demanded “an exercise in pragmatism” from the Catalan independence movement to face the “middle path” between the “maximum position” of the referendum and the immobility, which he attributes to the right, to “reinforce the self-government of Catalonia.”
Sánchez has defended that the amnesty law for those accused of the process will be very beneficial for “coexistence and political normalization in Catalonia”, but also because “we are going to recognize and rehabilitate political actors who until now, seven years later , have remained alien to the Spanish political dynamics,” he highlighted, in reference to former president Carles Puigdemont.
The head of the central Executive has rejected that after the approval of the amnesty law the next step is the self-determination referendum, as contemplated by the independence movement. “With the amnesty we reset the counter to zero, but we do not reset the memory to zero, we all have to draw lessons from a decade that brought us a hangover from which we have not yet emerged,” he said, alluding to the process. “We want to approve the amnesty for a total normalization of the political situation in Catalonia, and also to return to politics what never had to leave politics,” he argued. But he has warned that the self-determination referendum is the “maximum position” of the independence movement, not his. “The referendum, from a material point of view, does not fit into the Constitution. And it does not solve the political problem, because the proposal has to be transversal, in which a plurality of Catalan society is incorporated,” he pointed out.
The proposed agreement in this legislature that Sánchez has put on the table, in the face of the referendum and immobility, is the push for self-government in Catalonia. “There is an area in which we can find ourselves, which has to do with a transversal idea in a society where the concept and culture of self-government is deeply rooted,” he defended. “There is no room in any Constitution in the world for the secession or segregation of a part of the State, but we can find a space to advance a new agreement that reinforces the self-government of Catalonia,” he offered.
“The referendum does not fit into the Constitution, and it is also counterproductive to overcoming the fracture experienced during the past decade. And what we have to do is look forward, open a new stage, reinforce self-government, and find spaces where those of us who think differently can meet,” Sánchez stressed.
In this sense, the President of the Government has highlighted that his relationship with President Aragonès is “fluid and cordial.” “We can reach very important agreements for the self-government of Catalonia and, therefore, for Catalan society,” he defended.
Sánchez has opted, in this new legislature, to “reduce the significance” of the meetings he plans to hold with Carles Puigdemont as leader of Junts – “it is normal, it is logical, it is coherent” -, and also with the leader of ERC, Oriol Junqueras . But he has pointed out that his first meeting with Puigdemont will be held, in any case, after the amnesty law is approved. “The logical thing is that it is after the amnesty law,” he warned. It will be the first time that Sánchez and Puigdemont can meet again after seven years, because he recalled that their last meeting took place in Girona, in the summer before the events of 2017, when he was not yet president of the Government: “We were chatting, we had a pleasant conversation, but since then I haven’t had the chance,” he noted. Sánchez and Puigdemont met last week in Strasbourg, in the European Parliament, but both avoided greeting each other.
The head of the central Executive has reiterated his rejection of the judges designated by Junts appearing in the investigative commissions opened in this legislature in the Congress of Deputies, and has insisted that, in his opinion, the greatest example of ‘lawfare’ In our country it is the blockade attributed to the Popular Party to renew the General Council of the Judiciary (CGPJ). But Sánchez has separated the Democratic Tsunami from the alleged crime of terrorism attributed to it by the judge investigating this case, Manuel García Castellón. “Now we are in that judicial investigation and, therefore, I cannot comment, but I will say, from a more political point of view, that in this country, unfortunately, we have suffered two types of terrorism. ETA terrorism and jihadist terrorism, Barcelona also unfortunately suffered that tear, and I don’t think they are comparable,” he acknowledged. “I don’t think they are comparable,” he reiterated.
During his visit to Barcelona, ??Sánchez will meet this afternoon with the president, Pere Aragonès, at the Palau de la Generalitat. In the first institutional meeting since the investiture of the head of the Spanish Executive, it is expected that they will address issues such as the transfer of Rodalies in this legislature, despite its complexity – “We are going to try, that is our public and manifest will,” he acknowledged -, or financing, and in this sense he recalled that the Statute already contemplates the development of the Catalan Tax Agency. Before, they will attend together the inauguration of the MareNostrum5 supercomputer installed at the Supercomputing Center-Centro Nacional de Supercomputación (BSC-CNS).
