Catalan President will meet with Spanish PM to discuss Catalonia?s Autonomy

Barcelona (CNA).- The President of the Catalan Government, José Montilla, will meet with the Spanish Prime Minister, José-Luís Rodríguez Zapatero, next week in Madrid to discuss the sentence of the Spanish Constitutional Court on the Catalan Statute of Autonomy, which has reduced Catalonia’s Autonomy and has reinterpreted the Spanish Constitution. Montilla has announced this meeting himself in a radio interview with RAC1 (a Catalan private radio station), where he also explained that Zapatero called him on Saturday, the day of the demonstration.
The president of the Catalan Government will meet with José-Luís Rodríguez Zapatero in La Moncloa palace, the seat of the Spanish Prime Minister’s office, in Madrid. There is no date for the meeting, although it will not be the 23rd of July, when Zapatero is scheduled to come to Barcelona.

Montilla has stated that PM Zapatero “has a problem, as Spain has a problem. The historically called from a Spanish viewpoint, ‘the Catalan problem’, is also a Spanish problem and some people should be aware of this”. Montilla has not wished to explain any details of the conversation he had with Zapatero on Saturday after the demonstration. “I cannot speak on his behalf”, Montilla clarified.

In addition, the Vice President of the Spanish Government, María Teresa Fernández De la Vega, has stated that “the Catalan vindication [of Saturday] has a place in the plural but common project which is Spain”. This has been the first official reaction of the Spanish Socialist Government to the demonstration. Socialist leaders had already reacted to the demonstration, but only to accuse the opposition party, the Spanish nationalist People’s Party (PP), of having provoked Saturday’s demonstration with its anti-Catalan positions.