On days like this Monday you see the extent to which democracy in Spain had broken down. Something as simple as the president of Catalonia directly explaining to the Spanish prime minister topics from the right to self-determination to the 1st October referendum and the declaration of independence carried out by the Parliament on 27th October was impossible. All that and, for the moment, little more has now happened in the Moncloa palace as Pedro Sánchez received Quim Torra. There was no backing down, nor substantial advances. Many topics remained in the land of promises, "we'll study it", "I'm not against it", "I'm told"... and the like. But they spoke for more than two hours and the Catalan president explained his plan and his parliamentary mandate and he went into the Moncloa wearing a yellow loop in support of the Catalan political prisoners and denouncing the lack of freedoms. The same loop, incidentally, that Spanish nationalists want to remove from Catalonia's beaches and streets, believing it to be offensive.
The article 155 block [the parties which supported central government intervention in Catalonia] has cracked, if only tactically, because the occupant of the Moncloa needs oxygen and needs to build, if possible, his own narrative. Whilst the meeting was being held, the intolerant side of Spain accused Sánchez of being a traitor, of destroying the state and selling himself to the independence movement. And it did so with great pomp. The same with which it applauded Felipe VI's disastrous speech on 3rd October last year. The ratafia the president of Catalonia gave Sánchez is invigorating and helps with circulation but is clearly insufficient in the face of the commotion unleashed in Madrid.
By the way: what will the king think of Sánchez's moves compared with Rajoy's inaction? Would he repeat his televised address? He has to be uncomfortable, since he's part of the circles of PP and Ciudadanos and it's evident how misjudged his speech was and the poor role of his immediate team of advisers. At heart, those who believed Rivera's moment had arrived and who now have been left balancing by themselves on the wire, freaking out. Like Arrimadas, refusing to meet with the president of Catalonia over a banner calling for the release of the political prisoners or speaking about Quim Torra as "the loop guard", a stupid phrase from some off-duty spin doctor.
After the meeting between Sánchez and Torra, neither of the two parties is under great illusions with respect to the future. It's normal for it to be so: in the end, politics always hits up against reality. But it has to go through the process and the independence movement cannot let some of its own defining features be snatched away: leaders of dialogue to the end and in any forum, the defence of the civil and political rights of the Catalan people and the defence of pacifism as the way to achieve its political objectives.
At the end of the meeting, Pedro Sánchez proclaimed via Twitter, in Spanish and Catalan, that "a political crisis requires a political solution". It's an important quote. But it's nothing more than a quote. And at one point during his remarks, president Torra seemed to grant his counterpart in the Moncloa a period of two months to consider whether the path opened up leads anywhere. Two months would take us to 9th September, two days before the Diada [Catalonia's national day].
We'll see if this Monday's mise-en-scène lasts that long...