Torra open to accept meeting with Sánchez on December 21

President Quim Torra is considering accepting the Spanish president’s Pedro Sánchez request to meet in Barcelona on December 21.

Sánchez has formally requested a meeting with the Catalan president to "resume a constructive dialogue" in ordre to solve the current political crisis.

The Spanish cabinet is expected to hold a meeting in Barcelona that day, something that pro-independence groups have qualified as a "provocation."

Protests and strikes have been called for the day, and security is expected to be tight.

The Catalan government had previously asked the Spanish executive to hold a bilateral summit on December 21, something that Madrid refused.

Instead, the Spanish vice president Carmen Calvo formally wrote her Catalan counterpart Pere Aragonès to ask for "collaboration" in the organization of the logistics of the cabinet meeting and suggested that both presidents, Sánchez and Torra, should meet coinciding with the Spanish leader’s visit in Catalonia.

Catalan vice president Pere Aragonès accepted negotiating the meeting, and told his Spanish counterpart that they should discuss "the conditions and the content" of the summit between both presidents.