This Monday's meeting between the Spain's acting second deputy PM, Yolanda Díaz, and the Catalan president-in-exile and Junts MEP, Carles Puigdemont, has annoyed the political leaders of the Spanish right. But criticism of the meeting has come not only from the political parties, but also from the forces of law and order of the Spanish state, who have raised their voices and made public their discomfort. Several police unions have complained that the meeting, held this Monday in Brussels, "undermines all the work of the security forces against those involved in the [independence] process", seeks "criminal impunity" and shows a "shameful effrontery" against those who "defended the unity of Spain and the current legality".
In these terms, one of the police trade unions, the Sindicato Unificado de Policía (SUP), criticized that the meeting of the leader of the left-wing Sumar party - whose action has been disowned by the Socialists as not connected their own negotiations to try to form a government - seeks to reconstitute the Pedro Sánchez government at the cost of "undermining the work of the security forces to bring criminals to justice". All this for "an arbitrary and political decision". "The Spanish government is negotiating with a fugitive from justice, a criminal who is accused of sedition and misuse of funds," the SUP denounced. "This is an insult to the police who risked their lives to defend the unity of Spain," they say, referring to the police action on October 1st, 2017.
The SUP was not the only union upset by the meeting. The JUPOL police union, for its part, described the meeting as "a new manoeuvre to discredit the institutions of the Spanish government". "It is shameful that the Spanish government prefers to meet with the organizer of a coup d'état rather than with the police officers who defended the unity of Spain and the current legality", they complain. "Yolanda Díaz's meeting with Puigdemont is a new lack of respect from this executive to the security forces of the Spanish state," added JUPOL. "Police officers are being used as bargaining chips, [politicians] meet with criminals while leaving aside the hundreds of policemen injured in Catalonia and the 45 officers accused of defending the Constitution, the legal system and the unity of Spain", they continue.
Finally, the Confederación Española de Policía (CEP) also showed its "alarm and deep concern" over the meeting between Díaz and Puigdemont. "Converting fugitives from justice into valid spokespeople with institutional responsibility is a serious mistake," the CEP points out. "These types of initiatives erode the credit and dignity of executive power", they add, and affirm that "politics is being mixed with institutionality, something that is very dangerous".
Ciudadanos, furious about the meeting
The meeting this Tuesday between the Spanish deputy PM and Sumar leader, Yolanda Díaz, and the Catalan president-in-exile, Carles Puigdemont, to begin negotiations for a possible investiture of Pedro Sánchez, also provoked a significant reaction from Ciudadanos (Cs). The party that led the fiercest opposition to the independence movement in Catalonia at the time of the referendum, which has lost parliamentary support to the point where it has now disappeared from the Congress of Deputies, harshly criticized the meeting in the European Parliament, which it considers an attack on Spanish institutions. The general secretary of Cs, MEP Adrián Vázquez, used the word "shameful" to describe the photo of Díaz with "a fugitive from justice", referring to Puigdemont. "This marks a turning point in the image of Spain in the European Union", said the MEP, asserting that this approach sabotages his work against Puigdemont in the European institutions.