The next meeting of the dialogue table between the Spanish and Catalan government must start by discussing the use of Catalonia's right to self-determination, said Catalan president Quim Torra today in parliament. "This is the key to the meeting," he warned during the parliamentary question session, in response to a query from ERC spokesperson Sergi Sabrià.
"It is very easy, [the agenda for] this second meeting, let Mr Pedro Sánchez send me a letter saying that we will have a second meeting of the dialogue table in which, in line with what you have raised with us, the first point of the agenda is the exercise of Catalonia's right to self-determination: date and conditions", he stated.
To stop the 1st October from depreciating
The president warned that he doesn't want to be "a passive witness to the depreciation of the value of the 1st October", referring to the date of the independence referendum of 2017. "I refuse to break the strength of the 1st October. Whatever takes us to the point where we are once again demanding from the Spanish government that we specifically exercise Catalonia's right to self-determination, that's where I am," he said.
Sabrià had called on Torra to take the lead, together with vice-president, Pere Aragonès, in the process of dialogue, and warned in his speech that the Spanish state wants to make the problem of Catalonia into a chronic one, and the aim must therefore be to "return the conflict to politics" - in the sense that currently, the conflict is being conducted by the state through the courts. For this reason, he called on Torra to insist on Catalonia's demands for an amnesty, a referendum and the right to self-determination.
▶️Pregunta del president del Grup d'@Esquerra_ERC @sergisabria al president de la Generalitat @QuimTorraiPla a la #SessioControl del #Ple del @parlamentcat pic.twitter.com/D4RalIHBES
— Parlament de Catalunya (@parlamentcat) July 8, 2020
Video shows the entire exhcange in the Catalan Parlaiment between ERC spokesperson Sergi Sabrià and president Quim Torra (JxCat)
"We need to be able to prepare ourselves for this second meeting. The PSOE and Podemos government falter when we have our path well laid out and well prepared," he said, calling on the president to set a date for the meeting and force the Spanish government to commit itself.
Torra joked that he was always talking about "dialogue" with ERC spokesperson Sabrià and commented that he prefers to talk about "negotiation" because "talking for talk's sake, dialoging just to have dialogue, makes no sense".
In the president's response, he stated that the Spanish government's management of the pandemic has shown the will to recentralize in the PSOE-UP executive and added that the situation is "exactly the same as in the time of Mariano Rajoy" in terms of self-determination and repression.