Pedro Sánchez’s monologue
Spanish prime minister called on PDeCAT and ERC parties to support the budget and insisted there is no majority in favour of Catalonia’s independence
The Spanish prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, was in Barcelona again yesterday in his role as leader of the PSOE party to give his support to the PSC candidate for mayor of the city, Jaume Collboni, at an event in the Centre de Convencions before an audience of 2,000 people, according to the organisers. Although the subject of his speech was expected given that the day before the cabinet had approved the budget plans that include a significant spending package for Catalonia, Sànchez made little allusion to it. The prime minister limited himself to calling on the PDeCAT and ERC parties to support “a transformation project for the next 20 years,” and bar the way for the right-wing PP, C’s and VOX parties. Sánchez put forward his own plans, based on the values of “tolerance, respect, equality, justice and freedom,” as the best way to stop the drift to the right.
Apart from PDeCAT and ERC, Sánchez also had a message for president, Quim Torra, who at the end of his speech he called on to “govern” and “solve” the real problems affecting the public. “We ask him to go from monologue to dialogue,” he said, adding that the many elections in Catalonia always produce the same result: “the pro-independence camp does not have a social majority in Catalonia.” Sánchez called for overcoming “the bloc mentality” and “recovering and supporting coexistence,” which he believes has been broken due to the independence process.
Insisting that it is a situation that cannot be resolved in just a matter of months, Sánchez said dialogue was the only way forward, but without including any of the demands the Catalan government has proposed to him, which are based on two basic aspects: the imprisonment and exile of members of the former Catalan government, and a vote on self-determination.