Puigdemont urges Spanish Government to present their proposal for Catalonia

Toulouse (CNA).- The possibility pointed out by the delegate of the Spanish Government in Catalonia, Enric Millo, assuring that Spain’s executive would have a concrete proposal to overcome the current political deadlock between Catalonia and Spain has generated controversy. “If the Spanish State has any proposal which we are not aware of, we call them to put it on the table”, stated Catalan President, Carles Puigdemont. However, on Sunday he doubted that such an offer could actually exist. “It is like the Holy Spirit; everybody talks about it but nobody has actually seen it”, he said. “We do have a concrete proposal, which is clear and has been endorsed by the citizens” he said this Monday in Toulouse, after meeting with the MEDEF Occitanie, a French businessmen’s association. According to Puigdemont, Catalonia has been sitting at the negotiating table for long, but the “problem” is that there is no one at the other end of it. 

The Catalan President insisted that “dialogue is based on concrete proposals” and called for the executive of Spanish President Mariano Rajoy to present them. However, he lamented that the only proposal made by the Spanish executive so far is “to keep a status quo which doesn’t work”. Thus, he contradicted Millo’s statements assuring that the Spanish and the Catalan governments held meetings “at all levels” and that some of them “were not made public”. Puigdemont denied any meetings “neither private nor official” with the Rajoy’s executive. “Believe me, we would like for these meetings to exist, in whatever form”, he added. 

In a similar sense, Puigdemont lamented that the so-called ‘operation dialogue’ which the Spanish Government committed to carry out “has a lot of rhetoric and propaganda” but no concrete action. “I’d like to remind them that we are always willing to dialogue”, he stated. 

Munté considers Millo’s words a “confusing manoeuvre” 

In a similar sense, the Catalan Government’s spokeswoman, Neus Munté, also reacted to Millo’s statements and said that she considered them a “confusing manoeuvre” on the public opinion. According to Munté, the Catalan Government has not received any proposal from the Spanish Government “other than the suspension notices, threats of banning elected representatives from public office or warnings from the court”. 

The leader of the Conservative People’s Party in Catalonia, Xavier García Albiol, also contradicted Millo and denied “secret meetings” between the Spanish and Catalan Governments. He assured that Rajoy’s executive is willing to negotiate, but only after the referendum proposal is left aside.