The Catalan president, Pere Aragonès, on July 7 in the Parliament. (Photo: NurPhoto via .)
The president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, will personally attend the meeting of the dialogue table between the central and Catalan governments, which is scheduled to be held the third week of September in Barcelona, a summit that he admits will be “extremely difficult” .
Aragonès’ will is to go to the September meeting “with all force”, because it is “the most complex negotiation, but also the most ambitious”.
The president has avoided commenting on the statements made in recent days by some leaders of his Board members who have questioned the usefulness of the table and its viability, as some consider that it will not last if even the two years that they are provided for in the government agreement between ERC, Junts and CUP.
I will go personally and with all my strengthPere Aragonès, president of the Generalitat of Catalonia.
“I will go personally and with all my strength,” Aragonès said: “It is an opportunity to lay the foundations for negotiation, and no one said that this would be easy or that we get the amnesty and the self-determination referendum [de un dia para otro]”.
Aragonès warns his partners: “We do not ask anyone to renounce other strategic alternatives, what we say is that in this bet we go as many accompanied as possible and with all the ambition”.
The president of the Generalitat has not specified who will accompany him at the table and has limited himself to pointing out that “any institutional responsible who defends the referendum and the end of the repression will have my unconditional support.”
It has to be the State Government that decides who will represent himPere Aragonès, president of the Generalitat of Catalonia.
Of course, Aragonès has avoided commenting on whether the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, should be at the meeting: “It has to be the State Government that decides who will represent him.”
The dialogue table is the result of the pact with ERC. Republicans, aware that their commitment is not unanimous among the pro-independence parties, are making an effort to advance the process of dialogue with the State.
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Agreements are not a bargaining chip to renounce independence
Aragonès has asked that the agreements that were closed this Monday in the State-Generalitat Bilateral Commission not be used “as a bargaining chip” for the resolution of the political conflict.
The Catalan president saw well that the Bilateral Commission met although the Government considers the pacts “insufficient”. He has also warned that the agreements of this commission “are not and cannot be a bargaining chip to renounce the political goals of amnesty and self-determination.”
“We will be highly demanding” with respect to the transfer schedule provided for by the commission, he pointed out, and the 56 demanded by the Generalitat “have to be carried out.”
The Catalan president has indicated that his government will continue to demand that the Next Generation European funds destined for Catalonia “be managed directly by the Generalitat”, as it is the one that best knows “the Catalan reality and knows where it is necessary to invest.”
For Aragonès, the Government has the opportunity to demonstrate if there really is “the will to move forward” in the transfers and in the decentralization of the management of the funds.
This article originally appeared on The HuffPost and has been updated.