The general secretary of Together for Catalonia (Junts), Jordi Turull, has announced that the Catalan president-in-exile, Carles Puigdemont, and the prime minister of the Spanish government, Pedro Sánchez, will hold "a proper meeting". The Junts leader made this announcement during an interview on Spain's TVE one day after the two politicians met in Strasbourg at the plenary session of the European Parliament to take stock of the Spanish presidency of the European Union, although they did not hold any meeting as such due to agenda issues.

On the Café d'Idees programme, secretary Turull explained that the future meeting will be "to discuss the [Junts-PSOE] negotiation and go into the resolution of the conflict in more depth". For her part, the spokesperson for the Spanish government and education minister, Pilar Alegría, stated today that there is no meeting scheduled between the PM and Puigdemont. "I am not aware that this question is on the agenda. That is what I can tell you at the moment." Later, Turull affirmed to radio station RAC1 that the Socialists (PSOE) were informed that today he would announce that the meeting between the two leaders would take place. What's more, he indicated that before his announcement of the Sánchez-Puigdemont meeting, he had informed Santos Cerdán, in charge of the negotiations between Junts and the PSOE.

Jordi Turull (Junts): "This is not about photos, it is about resolving a political conflict, but they will meet and have a proper meeting."

The Junts leader explained that there will be no mediator present and that it will be a meeting, still without a date, between "two leaderships". "What is agreed is that there will be a proper meeting, which will last as long as it needs to. It is about normalizing relations and a negotiation that has not been possible since 2017 as a result of the repression," he added.

The importance of "maintaining  position"

Turull, when asked about the role played by the figure of the president-in-exile in the negotiations with the PSOE, stressed the importance of "maintaining their position". "For all these years we have  not let things pass by, and not having come out weakened has been very valuable, [now] going to the negotiation table," explained Turull, recalling that his party "has always made it very clear, if you want our votes they come with conditions, and if you're looking for something else, you don't need to bother talking to us."

In fact, the pro-independence leader made it clear that recently the PSOE has agreed to negotiate "things that were unprecedented". "They said that in no way would the amnesty or the mediator figure be possible, but there has been a change and we must take advantage of it, things have been achieved that until now the PSOE said were impossible", he stressed. However, what Turull wanted to make clear is that if there is no progress or there are "breaches" by the PSOE, "we will end the legislature, the seven votes of Junts will take a different orientation".

The amnesty law

Jordi Turull explained that currently his party sees the draft text of the amnesty law "with good eyes", since, he points out, Junts did not "leave anything to be decided at the amendments stage". With this, Turull means that everything in the bill has been agreed, although he does not rule out that if the lawyers tell them that some rectification is needed that "further strengthens our objective, we will assess it". This rectification, if necessary, would be done through technical amendments.

Criticism of ERC 

The general secretary of Junts was critical of the ERC dialogue table held during last Spanish legislature. He considers it a "pity" because "it has been of no use". Even so, he admitted that he benefited from the pardons, but commented that "now we are talking about amnesty".