The president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, has asked the independence movement for a new effort to “force the State” to make a proposal on the fit of Catalonia and has warned Pedro Sánchez that, if the Catalan issue is not resolved, it will be opening the door to a government of the extreme right. He said it at the conference he gave this Monday, on the occasion of the first anniversary of the last Catalan elections, and after assuring that the dialogue table with the Government is experiencing “a situation of blockage”, which he has blamed on the “little courage ” of Sánchez and his Executive.
“The State Government must demonstrate its democratic commitment. Because without the resolution of the political conflict, Spain slides towards authoritarianism, as the threat of the extreme right demonstrates,” he assured, in a message that wants to mark a turning point in his mandate after little more than eight months in the Government. With the purpose of launching a forceful warning, Aragonès has underlined the idea that the alternative to the solution of the Catalan conflict will be detrimental to the whole of democratic Spain. “And this will not be the responsibility of the independence movement but of those who govern more attentive to not angering the right than to resolve the underlying conflicts,” he said.
Aragonès has delivered the conference from the Museu Nacional d’Art (MNAC) and coinciding with the first anniversary of the elections in which the PSC of Salvador Illa won by the minimum but that ended up leading to the presence of the Generalitat in Aragonès. During the last few weeks, the head of the Government has met with the three main independence parties and from his team it had slipped that he was working on a proposal to recoup the movement for secession.
Aragonès has sent a clear message to Sánchez, but he has also had time for his partners at Junts, to whom he has conveyed that “there is not just one look at the independence movement”. “If the debate is reduced to identifying heroes and traitors, it loses the whole,” he said, after a few days in which the president of the Parliament has been under the spotlight for the withdrawal of the seat of the CUP deputy, Pau Juvillà. “It is necessary to abandon the tacticism, the reproaches and distrust that weaken our negotiating position and that prevent us from building future scenarios”, she has transferred to the party with which she governs. “It is necessary to rebuild trusts, with a broad and inclusive look, that includes the whole of sovereignty”, she has demanded of them.
The speech delivered this Monday followed in the footsteps of the ideas that Aragonès already presented just a month ago and in Madrid, where he also tried to light Sánchez’s red light, warning him of the importance of immediately convening the table because “eternalizing the negotiations” meant “sowing doubts about the dialogue”. A month later, a period in which the negotiating forum on the conflict was not convened but the Bilateral Commission was, the pro-independence leader has gone further than in Madrid and has spoken of a situation of “blockade” not only in Catalonia but for the whole of Spain.
“The Spanish left must choose if it wants to complete the pending democratic reform that includes the recognition of the plurinational nature of the State and, therefore, of the existence of the right to decide, or if it limits itself to representing a conservative, immobile and conformist left, self-conscious before the threat of the right of always”, has launched.
After this warning, Aragonès has addressed the whole of the independence movement to consider that the Government of Sánchez “will not move of its own free will” but “because of our strength”. “And that strength”, he continued, “means that we must act with more generosity, with more unity and with more cohesion”. The head of the Catalan Executive has considered that by strengthening themselves they will be able to “force the State government to move and start talking about proposals that really tackle the root of the problem”. Specifically, he has cited two: withdraw the cases against Carles Puigdemont and the rest of the politicians who are still prosecuted, on the one hand, and find a “democratic solution to the conflict” on the other.
During his speech, the president assured that in the coming days he will begin a dialogue with the main Catalan political actors “starting with the Catalan deputies in Madrid and the Catalan deputies in the European Parliament”, he said. Some meetings that should serve to “set in motion the great consensus that has made us advance so much,” he said, and to “reinforce the unity” of the sovereignists. In this line, Aragonès has proposed “a popular mobilization” that “contributes to unblock the negotiation with the State and reinforces the Catalan position to make amnesty and self-determination inevitable”.
The president also spent a few minutes reviewing his government agenda, under the idea that he has made “the whole of Catalonia” an icon of his mandate. Aragonès has argued the need for Catalonia to make a green revolution, a new boost to social services and “shared economic prosperity”. “Social inequalities today determine our health and the life expectancy of citizens,” he said, which is why he considered that a boost in income redistribution is needed. He has also praised the cohesive social diversity around Catalan. “Immersion must be promoted, because it is the country’s tool to guarantee that all children are multilingual”, he indicated.
Aragonès has also taken advantage of his speech to recall that his commitment is for the complete independence of Catalonia. “We cannot accept as an answer that there will never, never, never be a democratic way for us Catalans to decide our future,” he said. “We have not come to manage and that’s it. The Generalitat is not a simple autonomous administration, it is the government of the country”, he has riveted.
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