bilateral

What’s at stake as both cabinets meet on Monday? Lack of investment, transfer of powers, and protection of Catalan language on the agenda

Pro-independence parties hint at jailed leaders attending 'negotiating table' alongside government officials

New book from Republicans presents itself as a “guide to independence”

Joint statement released with a commitment to ensuring that any agreements reached are "within the framework of legal certainty"

JxCat spokesperson says presence of figure is an "obligation" while ERC avoids making issue a red line

Quim Torra and Pedro Sánchez to sit down together again during autumn in Barcelona

Artadi takes on Spanish delegation: “what’s their problem with dialogue?”

Spanish government rules out independence vote in meeting marked by "great discrepancies" 

Quim Torra states bilateral negotiations with Spanish government should lead to "actions and not only words"

Opposition skeptical as governments are set to meet on Wednesday after 7-year break

Spain’s call for Catalan leaders to attend the upcoming Autonomous Communities’ summits to discuss regional policies has not changed the Government’s plan for the meetings. The Catalan Vice President and Catalan Minister for Economy and Tax Office, Oriol Junqueras, have refused to attend the Council on Fiscal and Financial Policies (CPFF, going by its Catalan initials) this Thursday, citing other political commitments. Catalan Secretary of Economy, Pere Aragonès, will go instead. For his part, Catalan President, Carles Puigdemont, has already announced he will not attend the Conference of Presidents convened by the Spanish President, Mariano Rajoy, for the 17th of January. “Catalonia has won the right to a bilateral relationship as the demands of the Catalan people have nothing to do with the requests of other Autonomous Communities”, Puigdemont said in October, when he announced that he would not be attending the conference.

The Catalan President, Carles Puigdemont, is suspicious regarding Spain’s executive willingness to dialogue. During this Wednesday’s session of control in the Parliament, Puigdemont stated that Catalonia deserves a bilateral negotiation with the Government in Madrid and that he considers anything other than this a way to “dilute and disguise what is really going on” in Catalonia and therefore “confuse public opinion”. Pro-independence radical left CUP MP, Mireia Boya, went a bit further and urged Puigdemont not to go along with Spain’s “siren calls” in relation to its supposed openness to dialogue. On the other hand, Xavier García Albiol, the leader of the Catalan branch of Spain’s governing party PP, called for Puigdemont not to be like “a statue” before the “signals” sent by the Spanish Government. 

PSOE’s leader, Pedro Sánchez, proposed a “political agreement with Catalonia” which would be bilateral and in the context of the reform of the Spanish Constitution foreseen by the Spanish Socialists. According to PSOE’s candidate for Spanish President, this agreement would “recognise” Catalonia’s “singularity” and “improve its self-government” while always “respecting the implications of the principle of equality”. However, Sánchez didn’t specify whether this agreement would imply a new Statute of Autonomy for Catalonia. This bilateral agreement is one of the proposals in the document “Commitments for a ‘yes’ to the government of change” which PSOE presented this Monday. Another one is a possible reform of the funding scheme of the Autonomous Communities which would start in the next two months.