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In an annoyed, displeased tone, Catalonia's foreign minister, Ernest Maragall, has given his evaluation of the first meeting in seven years of the bilateral Spain-Catalonia commission held in Barcelona today. In a press conference after the meeting, Maragall said that the three-and-a-half hour meeting confirmed "profound" differences between the two administrations and called on the state for "rectification".

The foreign minister, who chaired the meeting for the Catalan side, criticised the Spanish government for having no project for Catalonia and refusing to speak about either the right to self-determination or the pro-independence prisoners and exiles. Maragall described the meeting as "cordial" and "frank", but also "tough". He said it's been shown that the governments of Spain, represented by a delegation headed by minister Meritxell Batet, and Catalonia have different concepts of both "normality" and "bilaterality".

The councillor criticised the "coldness" with which the question of the prisoners and exiles was treated. The Catalan government had raised the possibility of creating a commission on "rights and freedoms" to treat that subject, and that of self-determination, but Spanish government representatives shut down the suggestion.

That wasn't the only complaint. Maragall also criticised Pedro Sánchez's government for them not having reached any agreement, even on the withdrawal of appeals before the Constitutional Court against certain social laws passed by the Catalan Parliament. They agreed only to create a commission to study possible modifications to make to the laws to lift the appeals, Batet said in her press conference.