Read in Catalan

First: I liked the speech of the president of the Catalan government, Carles Puigdemont. Serene, open to dialogue, tempered, close and inclusive. No slamming the door at a difficult moment, and 24 hours after Felipe VI, in an unusual partisan speech broadcast on all television channels, had lost a great opportunity to be the king of all and not only the spokesman of the PP (Popular Party) and Ciudadanos (Citizens). The forms are always important and if the King wasted the occasion on Tuesday, Puigdemont clung as much as he could to dialogue, and left the monarch with the heavy burden as spokesman for repression. There is no argument about the gap between the two speeches.

Second: the mediation. Puigdemont insists on international mediation. Oriol Junqueras (Catalan vice president) has promoted some meetings and has worked in depth on this route. There are many political and social sectors that defend it. The international press demanded it in a very unanimous way, and different European governments subscribe to it with the discretion that diplomacy usually works with these things. In Spain, Podemos (We Can) has led a proposal in this sense, and that has been accepted by the Esquerra Republicana (Republican Left) and the PDeCAT (Catalan European Democratic Party). The Spanish government rejects the initiative of all, as if it is only interested in the public humiliation of the Catalan government. The irresponsibility of the PP should not be supported by the PSOE (Spanish Sociliasts Worker's Party) and in a special way by Pedro Sánchez (leader of PSOE), who needs to look up if he aspires to govern one day and give up the position of being exclusively the crutch of the right wing.

Third: the use of Spanish and Catalan in the intervention of Puigdemont corrects a serious error of the King, who deliberately omitted the Catalan language, even though he knows it perfectly, as the president of the Catalan government reminded him. It also sends a message to that Spain, a minority but important, that has voiced out loud its irritation about the police repression of last Sunday, and for the impasse that the Spanish government is bringing to Catalan politics. The appeal that "Catalonia is one people that loves the languages it speaks, that it has no problem with the identities and that it wants to continue contributing to the development of the Spanish state" is a wink. Insufficient outside of Catalonia, exaggerated for others within Catalonia, but gigantic alongside the royal silence of more than 800 people needing medical assistance on Sunday through police violence.

Fourth: Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría is at war. The PSOE promoting a motion of censure at the Congress of Deputies for her role as deputy prime minister of the government for the events of Sunday led her to commit an immense error after the intervention of Puigdemont. Beyond the television scene of her recorded video in which her image seemed to disintegrate in a surprising way, it doesn't seem the time for pyromaniacs and firefighters. Whilst Puigdemont has taken his time to answer the King, SSS did it almost immediately after the intervention of the president. Obviously, she wasn't responding to him, she was addressing her own public.

Fifth, Parliament has been summoned for Monday in which it will analyse the results of the referendum held last Sunday. The speech of Puigdemont needs a response from Spanish politics that is not another slam of the door. In politics, the negotiation time never ends. They say it in unison, Puigdemont and Junqueras.