The acting second deputy prime minister of Spain and leader of the Sumar party, Yolanda Díaz, has told the Catalan president in exile and MEP, Carles Puigdemont, of her party's commitment to "explore all democratic solutions to unblock the political conflict". This Monday, Díaz has been the protagonist of the first fully public meeting by a member of the Spanish government with the Catalan leader. After almost three hours of meeting in the European Parliament, and with the reactions piling up in Madrid to an appointment that had not been announced until this morning, Sumar made a statement in which it affirmed that the meeting took place normally with a cordial tone and has made it possible to establish a "normalized and stable" relationship between the respective parties. Sources from Puigdemont's circles consulted by ElNacional.cat assert that it took place in a "very cordial" atmosphere, while the comment from the former Catalan president and founder of the Together for Catalonia (Junts) expressed in a social media post was that the meeting is part of "democratic normality" and should not cause surprise nor be regarded as exceptional.
"We share the deep conviction that politics must be conducted from dialogue and democratic principles. In this regard, we agree to explore all democratic solutions to unblock the political conflict", said Sumar, in addition to underlining the conviction that political problems "must be solved by political means, to find solutions based on dialogue" given that "democracy consists of dialogue between different positions".
Subsequently, Junts also made a statement in terms very similar to those of the Spanish deputy PM's party in which it "agreed to explore all democratic solutions to unblock the conflict". "We share the deep conviction that political problems must return to the political path, to find solutions based on dialogue. Democracy consists of dialogue between different positions", adds the text in which Junts considers that the meeting "makes it possible to establish a normalized and stable meeting" with Summar.
In addition, both Puigdemont and Díaz expressed their satisfaction with the way the meeting went on their Twitter accounts.
The acting Spanish second deputy PM travelled to Brussels on Sunday to meet with Puigdemont this afternoon at the European Parliament. At the meeting, which was not publically announced until a few hours before it took place, the Junts MEP Toni Comín and the Sumar figure Jaume Asens were also present. The Spanish government moved quickly to disassociate itself from the meeting, emphasizing that Díaz was not appearing in the Belgian capital on behalf of the Spanish government. At the same time, as the appointment provoked a barrage of reactions, the People's Party (PP) argued that the deputy PM's journey to Brussels cannot be separated from her responsibility to the government.
Up till now, the only talks that are known to have taken place since November 2017 between Carles Puigdemont and a representative of the Spanish executive are the phone conversations between Diaz's predecessor as second deputy PM, Pablo Iglesias, in 2018, in the context of the negotiation of the Spanish government budgets. Yolanda Díaz has now gone a step further and travelled to Brussels, in a gesture that has raised tensions in parts of the Madrid political establishment, with criticism centred on the status of "fugitive from justice" which some circles in the Spanish capital attribute to the exiled Catalan president.
Today's meeting takes place in the context of the complex process of attempting to form a new Spanish government following the July 23rd general election, whose results meant that neither the right bloc (PP and Vox) nor the left (led by the Socialists and Sumar) have an easy path to a parliamentary majority that would allow a new executive to be formed, and with Junts, having won seven seats, able to decant the result. Hence, a meeting that is the first official public encounter in several years between the Junts founder and a member of the Spanish government, even if Yolanda Díaz appears in the name of her party, Sumar. Meanwhile, it will be the PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo who will, despite lacking the numbers, attempt to win the confidence of the Spanish lower house to form a government on September 26th and 27th.