Catalan president and Spanish PM to meet on December 21

The leaders of the Catalan and Spanish governments will hold a meeting on December 21 in the headquarters building of the Catalan executive.

Pere Aragonès will meet with Pedro Sánchez in their first institutional meeting since Sánchez was reelected as prime minister of Spain for another term this November. 

Despite being the first encounter since Sánchez's investiture, the Catalan government still hopes this meeting will be a working one between the two administrations.

Among the issues on the table is the resolution of the political conflict between Spain and Catalonia, with the Catalan executive being led by a party in favor of independence.

However, for Aragonès it is also important to deal with other topics within such with the transfer of the Rodalies commuter train line from Spain to Catalonia, part of the investiture agreement between the Socialists and Aragonès' party, Esquerra Republicana. 

Also part of the investiture deal that will likely be discussed is the pending amnesty law, which will be debated in the Spanish Conrgess on December 12, and a forgiveness of 20% of the debt the Catalan executive owes to the Spanish one, valued at around €15 billion. 

Aragonès sees the need to follow up on the fulfillment of these pacts with the Socialist party as a priority.

Dialog table

Another element of the investiture agreement was to continue the dialogue table between the administrations aimed at resolving the territorial conflict between Catalonia and Spain.

The dialogue table is now in a "second phase," but the next meeting still has no set date.

So far, there have been three meetings of the dialogue table. The first was with Quim Torra as president in February 2020, right before the pandemic began. The second meeting was held in May 2021, with Aragonès as president, while the most recent came in July 2022.