The Government of Pedro Sánchez took a 180-degree turn yesterday after initially postponing the dialogue table with the Government until after the Catalan elections following the advance announced by Quim Torra. After showing ERC his anger over this postponement and a express meeting in Congress between the president and Gabriel Rufián, the Executive rejected and agreed to go to the table before the elections. Socialists do not want clashes with a party they need to approve the General State Budgets.
At first, Moncloa issued a statement informing that Sanchez held the meeting on February 6 with Torra, but urged to start the dialogue table agreed with ERC before the investiture for “when the Catalan people have spoken.”
In that communication, the Government also blurred the appointment of Sánchez and Torra circumscribing it to institutional collaboration on issues such as the effects of the temporary Gloria. In the same way, the Executive diluted the meeting informing that “Sanchez will be in Barcelona until the 7th and intends to also meet with the mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, and with the president of the Diputación de Barcelona, Nuria Marín, as well as the Barcelona Global entity “.
This claim to postpone the table lit the mood of ERC. The president of the Republicans in the Parliament, Sergi Sabriá, He has accused Sánchez of “flagrant breach of the agreement” between the PSOE and ERC in what he has considered an “absolute irresponsibility.” Sabrià, like the Catalan vice president, Pere Aragonès, has demanded an “imminent” date for the dialogue table.
Subsequently, the republican party has issued a note in which it says that “it makes no sense to wait for the constitution of a new Government because the political route must be opened now, it is urgent and essential”.
This ERC reaction has turned the Executive's position, which after a few hours issued a statement explaining that, “to rule out any doubts regarding our willingness to dialogue, we express our willingness to hold the agreed dialogue table between governments, before the Catalan elections. “
However, Moncloa acknowledges that, “given the electoral horizon decided by Torra, the best circumstances are not given to initiate dialogue between governments, when one of them has put an end to the legislature and the new Government cannot be constituted until holding of the announced elections. “
Bald had left the appointment in the air
Shortly before Moncloa issued its first version, the first vice president of the Government, Carmen Calvo, had already left the celebration of the meeting between Sánchez and Torra on the air.
In statements to the media this morning, Calvo has assured that this meeting “to occur” will be made to talk about the problems of Catalonia in the framework of the “legal security” of the Spanish State and not to face this conversation from some approaches which has been reflected in the media this Thursday by independentism.
He also referred to Torra’s interview on Thursday in which the independence leader has reiterated that his demand is that the self-determination and amnesty of the prisoners convicted of the process be negotiated at the dialogue table. “I need to know under what conditions we will negotiate what is necessary to negotiate, which is the exercise of the right to self-determination and amnesty. It is the assignment we have. It is not a question of the president, it is also of ERC and the CUP,” he said in the cited interview in Catalunya Ràdio, collected by EP.
Torra plays to burst Sánchez's Budget and its continuity in Moncloa