This Tuesday, the Council of Ministers approved the challenge before the Constitutional Court (TC) of the agreement of the Parliamentary Committee to process a bill, arising from a popular legislative initiative, for the declaration of independence of Catalonia. In its appeal to the TC, the Government has requested the suspension of the processing of this initiative, which will imply its immediate suspension.
This decision is “absolutely consistent” with the policy of Pedro Sánchez’s Executive, as highlighted by the Minister of the Presidency, Justice and Relations with the Cortes, the socialist Félix Bolaños. “This resource protects the Constitution, which is our framework for dialogue and coexistence, and protects the institutions of Catalonia,” he assured. And he has argued that the Statute and the self-government of Catalonia are regulated by norms that this independence initiative, in his opinion, would “tear down.”
The Government and the PSOE, Bolaños has stressed, “in no case are they committed to the independence and isolation of Catalonia with respect to Spain and the rest of Europe.” “Of course not, what we want is the opposite, for Catalonia to be part, and to be an essential and fundamental part of Spain and the European Union,” he defended. “We do not believe in any isolationist policy of Catalonia, we want it to be the driving force of both Spain and the European Union,” he insisted.
“This appeal goes along those lines, of course against any processing of a law that is divisive and generates tension and a social and political fracture as the approval of this norm would generate,” the minister stressed. “The defense of the Constitution, the Statute and the self-government institutions of Catalonia are the best guarantee for coexistence,” he highlighted.
Bolaños, on the other hand, has categorically denied, as the PSOE leadership did the day before, that they are negotiating the terms of a self-determination referendum in Catalonia, no matter how much ERC and Junts demand it. “We are in an electoral campaign in Catalonia and therefore we are going to hear many things, some that are not true,” said the minister, in reference to the recent statement by the general secretary of Esquerra, Marta Rovira, that they were already negotiating the referendum with the socialists.
“Our commitment to agreement, dialogue, the future, transversal majorities and coexistence is a clear policy of this Government,” Bolaños defended. “On the contrary, old formulas that led to collective failures and generated tension, conflict and confrontation, led nowhere,” he warned. “What surprises me is that there are still those who bet on those ancient formulas of confrontation, conflict and collective failure.”
“We, of course, are committed to the future, to coexistence, to dialogue between different people and to large transversal agreements where the vast majority of Catalans agree to continue moving forward and to ensure that Catalonia continues to be what it is recovering after a lost decade, which is being the driving force of Europe and Spain,” Bolaños concluded.
