The Government changes the name of the Catalan Ministry for Foreign Affairs in order to “move on”

Barcelona (CNA).- The Catalan government has decided this Tuesday to change the name of the Catalan Ministry for Foreign Affairs, amid the controversy with the Spanish executive. The new name is to be the ‘Affairs and Institutional Relations and Foreign Affairs and Transparency’. “We have made this decision in order not to stop” stated Catalan Ministry for Foreign Affairs, Raül Romeva, who qualified the government’s decision as a “preventive” measure. The pro-independence party ‘Junts Pel Sí’s top member and former MEP also assured that the government “won’t stop doing” foreign action and insisted that “neither the functions nor the responsibilities” of the department have changed. The announcement comes after the Spanish Constitutional Court (TC) decided to suspend the new Catalan Ministry for allegedly exceeding the government’s competences in matters of foreign action specified in the 

“I will continue to be Catalan Ministry for Foreign Affairs” stated Romeva “this is a minor change, a guarantee to continue fulfilling the 27-S democratic mandate”. According to Romeva, these changes don’t modify “at all” the content of the new ministry “neither the functions nor the responsibilities”. “We are willing to go until the end”, stated Romeva who described the government’s decision to change the department’s name as “preventive”.

“The TC’s decision aimed to stop the whole process” explained Romeva and emphasised that “the functions of the department weren’t affected”. “The response is very clear: the appeal has no base nor reason, it only aims to agitate us” stated Romeva and assured that modifying the name of the new ministry “would allow” the Catalan executive “to move on without getting trapped by the TC’s sophistry”.