Opposition parties criticize bilateral summit

Opposition parties in Catalonia have criticized Wednesday’s bilateral summit between Catalonia and Spain.

Both the far-left CUP and unionist Ciutadans (Cs,) poles apart ideologically, have reacted to the highly-anticipated meeting which was the first of its kind in seven years.

The Socialist Spanish government followed in the same vein of the previous administrative by saying there would be no negotiating an independence referendum.

CUP: no to self-determination is “contempt”

For the CUP, this came as no surprise. Yet they view this rejection “very clearly.” “It is the answer to the people of Catalonia and their exercising of self-determination on October 1,” said CUP MP Vidal Aragonés. “We are beginning to think that it is complete contempt when meeting after meeting there is no answer,” he added.

“We have already said very clearly what we thought of the meeting,” Aragonés explained at a parliamentary press conference on Thursday, accusing the Spanish government of condoning the “violence on October 1.”

Ciutadans: a demand for “explanations"

Meanwhile, Cs MP Lorena Roldán has demanded that the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ernest Maragall, “give explanations” regarding the issues that were discussed during the bilateral summit between the Spanish government and the Generalitat.

For this reason, on Wednesday, a request for Maragall to appear before the Committee on  Institutional Affairs was made, so that he “is subjected to due parliamentary control for his actions as representative of the government.”

Roldán also criticized the Spanish administrative for meeting with the Generalitat in the first place. She called on Spain’s president Pedro Sánchez to “stop giving wings to pro-independence forces” because “they are  preparing to carry out a coup on democracy once again.”

“Disappointing” says government

Also on Thursday, the Catalan government called the meeting “disappointing.” “What’s their problem with dialogue? What are they afraid of?” asked Elsa Artadi, the Catalan government spokesperson, in an interview with the Catalan public radio a day after the summit.

Artadi warned that should president Pedro Sánchez enforce the same policies in Catalonia as his predecessor, pro-independence parties might withdraw their support from his government in the Spanish parliament.