Spanish prime minister Mariano Rajoy has demanded that the Catalan president Carles Puigdemont renounce the "brutal blackmail" of a unilateral declaration of independence as the only possible way to open dialogue, sources within Rajoy's Moncloa palace have said. This the reply Rajoy is reported to have given to the leader of Spain's third-largest party, Podemos (We Can), Pablo Iglesias, who had proposed the creation of a board of "trustworthy" mediators to resolve the conflict. "This isn't negotiable, you can't deal with someone planning a brutal extortion of the state," say the sources.
"The key is for the two governments to come to an agreement. In a situation like the current one, I believe we all have to make efforts to open dialogue paths," said Iglesias in a public statement. As such, after a meeting he held this morning with Puigdemont's PDeCAT (Catalan European Democratic Party), ERC (Catalan Republic Left) and PNV (Basque Nationalist Party) in the Spanish Congress this morning, he suggested just such a dialogue path to Rajoy.
The leader of En Comú Podem (In Common We Can, a Catalan coalition including Podemos), Xavier Domènech, has already spoken about the proposal to the leader of the Catalan branch of PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party), Miquel Iceta, who is reported to have received the idea very positively. "The tension must be deescalated," urged Domènech.