Meeting of governments

It may have looked good for the cameras but there was very little content and zero progress. The much anticipated meetings between the Catalan president and the Spanish prime minister took place yesterday, alongside a parallel meeting of key ministers, ending with a “courtesy” photo for the media. What was an opportunity to provide a minimum impulse to dialogue between the two executives, ended up as a battle between advisors and communication teams on how to spin the encounters.

Sources from the Moncloa admitted there was no order of the day and they struggled to give the meeting between Quim Torra and Pedro Sánchez importance, while that between vice president Pere Aragonès and presidency minister Elsa Artadi, on the one hand, and deputy prime minister Carmen Calvo and territorial policy minister Meritxell Batet, on the other, was incidental.

Earlier in the day, Artadi had admitted on the radio that little was expected from the meeting, and the main aim was to get a commitment from the Spanish government not to reimpose direct rule on Catalonia, which the unionist PP and Cs parties have been calling for. Artadi also called for the implementation of mechanisms for both governments to coordinate.

With the exact arrangements for the meetings only being resolved at the last minute, the day began with a private meeting between Torra and Sánchez, who then joined the other meeting, spending a total of just an hour and a half together.

Meanwhile, the Spanish government made the contents of the cabinet meeting due to take place today in Barcelona public, with the only issue affecting Catalonia being the authorization of contracts to carry out work on public roads for 112 million euros.