The last meeting of the dialogue table may have been on July 27 of last year. Each of the three meetings is still a staging, but they attest to the climate of relations between the Spanish and Catalan governments. The Supreme Court and the Prosecutor’s Office have ignored the changes in the crime of embezzlement and until today Moncloa and the Generalitat have only reproached each other for the results of the reform of the Penal Code. Today, the Government has practically taken for granted that a new edition of this negotiation space is not going to take place in all of 2023. It attributes this to the current context, with municipal elections -and in some communities also regional elections- on May 28 , and general, foreseeably at the end of this year.
Thus, the spokesperson for the Government, Patrícia Plaja, has assured this afternoon at a press conference after the meeting of the Executive Council that there have been no contacts between the two governments and she has shown little confidence regarding a new appointment of the dialogue table . “At the moment in which we find ourselves, due to the electoral context, it is even more complicated [for there to be a new meeting] than it has been in the last two years,” Plaja admitted before stating that another is not planned. meeting.
In any case, the spokeswoman has valued “the negotiation strategy” that the Government has used at that table. The crime of sedition has fallen from the Penal Code, embezzlement has been modified, pressure sentences for nine pro-independence leaders were pardoned -although the disqualifications for some of them remain- and the composition of the Court of Accounts was modified.
“Are we where we wanted? No, obviously. That is why she continues to work and fight for amnesty, ”said the spokeswoman. Plaja has highlighted that the Government, at that table, has taken “very important steps” within the margins of politics, without ignoring that the “Spanish courts continue with the systematic persecution” against the independence movement. For Plaja, the writings of the Prosecutor’s Office, which requests prison sentences of seven and six years for the considered architects of 1-O, Josep Maria Jové and Lluís Salvadó, are another example that there is a “general cause against the independence movement”. .
The spokeswoman has hinted that the Government can do little in the judicial field, other than go to the European courts to denounce that the Spanish judicial leadership “continues to do politics.”
In any case, the Government has demanded “courage” from Pedro Sánchez after affirming the Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, that with the accusations of the Prosecutor’s Office against Jové and Salvadó it is evident that the events of 1-O are not decriminalized. ERC demanded on Monday that the PSOE defend the reform of the Penal Code promoted by both actors and accused the Prime Minister of “taking a complex” before the extreme right. However, Plaja wanted to make it clear that “the real problem” is in the proceedings of the courts and “the desire for revenge” that they show.
On this reform of the Penal Code. Aragonès promised months ago to appear in Parliament to give explanations. Junts demands that he keep his word every other day. Today, Plaja has avoided ruling on a possible appearance and has argued that in any case the president has already given explanations both in public and in private. The spokeswoman has justified that the Govenr’s attention has been fixed these months on the negotiation of the budgets of the Generalitat for 2023, which are still being processed in the Catalan Chamber, for which reason she has not been able, as she has said, to undertake other actions, as would also be the work to form a clarity agreement that sets the conditions of a hypothetical referendum agreed with the State.