Sánchez wants head to head meeting

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.