Sánchez wants head to head meeting
Prime minister willing to meet Torra but rules out including ministers and calls for talks on issues other than independence
Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, hopes the trip to Barcelona to hold a cabinet meeting will include meeting president Quim Torra, similar to when they met on La Moncloa in July. While speculation over an innovative format, such as a meeting with the leaders and their cabinets, was rife yesterday, Sánchez insists on a private meeting with Torra to avoid the image of a summit between two states. The prime minister also warned that while he will listen to everything Torra has to say on self-determination, he would like a broader agenda. “Will Torra want to talk about self-determination? As long as it falls within the Constitution we can talk about anything. But the time spent talking about self-determination I’d spend talking about poor conditions and public services and how to rebuild the welfare state that has been damaged by these years of crisis in Catalan society,” he said in Brussels.
While Madrid prepares to send a thousand police officers to Barcelona from outside Catalonia to join a deployment of 9,000 officers from the Spanish police, the Guardia Civil and the Mossos d’Esquadra, Sánchez called the decision to hold the cabinet meeting in the Catalan capital “a sign of respect and love towards Catalan society.”
Spanish government spokeswoman, Isabel Celáa, expressed full confidence in the Catalan police, while her Catalan counterpart, Elsa Artadi, from Berlin replied that the government sees no need for “officers from outside” to come to Catalonia to ensure safety during the meeting on December 21.
Even though ministers may not take part, the Catalan government has not closed the door on a Torra-Sánchez meeting, as long as the issue of self-determination is discussed. “We have always appealed for dialogue, the format should not be the focus,” said Artadi.