The main candidate to lead the PSOE now says he does not support Catalonia's self-determination

Madrid (ACN).- Eduardo Madina, who is the main candidate to become the new Secretary General of the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE), nuanced his previous statement in which he supported a "legal" self-determination vote in Catalonia. Madina stated on Monday he would back a "citizen participation mechanism", "agreed" with the Spanish authorities and within the broader framework of a Constitutional Reform, when he was asked about Catalonia's self-determination referendum. However, after all media interpreted he was backing an agreed self-determination process, to which the PSOE opposes, Madina corrected his words and said they were "a mistake". "In order to avoid misinterpretations: the legal consultation votes that I accept are those foreseen in the Constitution for the entirety of Spain", he added on Tuesday.

The person deemed most likely to become the new leader of the PSOE, Eduardo Madina, got confused around Catalonia's self-determination process. Madina, who is supposed to represent left-wing factions of the party, firstly stated he was backing "legal […] citizen participation mechanisms", when he was asked about Catalonia's independence vote. "If there are possibilities to reach an agreement within the legal framework, the citizen participation mechanisms through legal methods seem alright to me", he said on Monday.

The statement was contradictory with the PSOE's stance on this issue, but it was in line with Madina's proposal to increase citizen participation in the decision-making processes, to bring politics closer to the citizen and to expand Spain's democratic quality. Therefore, according to Madina's words from Monday, he would support that Catalan citizens were able to vote on their own collective future in a legal process agreed with the Spanish authorities, a similar formula to the Scottish referendum.

However, the next day, he nuanced his previous words and stated that he was only supporting "the consultation votes foreseen" in the current Constitution and not the Catalan one. "In order to avoid misinterpretations: the legal consultation votes that I accept are those foreseen in the Constitution for the whole of Spain", he stated on Tuesday.