Catalan president Quim Torra said it first, and then the Spanish government confirmed it: the fundamental differences on the resolution of the Spain-Catalonia political conflict are huge. Thus, this Wednesday's first meeting of the dialogue table saw the Catalan delegation asserting the demands for self-determination and an amnesty, but the Spanish side once again answered in the negative. "The prime minister has stressed that his government does not agree with the supposed right to self-determination," said Spanish government spokesperson María Jesús Montero in the press conference afterwards. In spite of this, she called for discrepancies to be "set aside".
Speaking to the press after the three-hour meeting, María Jesús Montero confirmed that president Torra had put the self-determination and amnesty issues on the table. And he received a response from Pedro Sánchez: "Speaking just as clearly, the prime minister said that the government does not concur with the supposed right to self-determination. The meeting was very frank." With regard to this, she called for "imaginative and creative formulas" to be sought to deal with all these points of profound discrepancy.
With reagrd to the encounter itself, the Spanish minister assessed it positively, saying that it was "a very important first step in the normalization of institutional and also affective relationships after ten years of confrontation and reproaches". She asserted that a "new climate" and a "new dialogue had begun to lay the foundations for the new phase we have called the agenda for the re-encounter."
Montero acknowledged that negotiation would be "very complex" and did not expect any short-term results, which is why she insisted on starting with the points where an understanding could be reached. To overcome the discrepancies, she called for "dialogue, empathy and the capacity for comprehension", and for "intensity" in this. She said that both sides "expressed a will to understand, to overcome the political blockade and to move on."
As for the demand for an international mediator, which president Torra placed on the table again, the spokesperson for the Spanish government reiterated its refusal and, instead, promised transparency. "We will continue to work under this methodology," she said.