The first meeting between representatives of the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE), Catalan separatist leader Carles Puigdemont and an ‘international verifier’ who will monitor that the agreements between both parties are respected will take place on Saturday in Geneva, sources from both sides told Euractiv’s partner EFE.
It will be the first meeting between Together For Catalonia (JxCat), the right-wing separatist party led by Puigdemont, who has been on the run since the 2017 secessionist attempt in the Spanish region, and members of the PSOE along with that “international verifier”, whose identity was not revealed.
On Wednesday, Education Minister and government spokeswoman Pilar Alegría downplayed the importance of not knowing the name of this “international verifier” and denied that the progressive executive (PSOE and the left-wing platform Sumar) intends to “hide anything”.
“It is not a question of anything remaining hidden” since “if there is a hallmark of this government, it is transparency”, she said.
Sánchez has returned to power thanks to the generous political and economic concessions he has been forced to make to JxCat and its left-wing separatist rival, the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), in exchange for the votes of both Catalan formations.
Among the main concessions Sánchez (PSOE/S&D) has made are the approval of a controversial amnesty law for those involved in the 2017 secessionist attempt in Catalonia, including Puigdemont himself, the cancellation of €15 billion of debt owed by that region to the central state, and the transfer of full powers from Madrid to Catalonia over the local train network.
One of Puigdemont’s demands to lend JxCat’s seven votes in the Spanish Parliament, which were decisive for Sánchez’s re-election, was that an “international verifier” be involved in monitoring the agreements.
Spain, ‘tutored’ from abroad?
Partido Popular (PP/EPP), the main opposition force in parliament, considers it a “humiliation” for Spain that Sánchez accepted the presence of an external “verifier” because, it claims, this means expressly admitting that Madrid needs to be “tutored” from abroad.
The PSOE´s “number three”, Santos Cerdán, who negotiated the agreement with Puigdemont in Brussels on behalf of Pedro Sánchez, will take part in the meeting, and the former Catalan president will also attend, EFE reported.
During the trip he made to Egypt and Gaza on 24 November, Sánchez defended the need for an “international verifier” because, he said, they can help in bilateral contacts due to the very distant positions on many points and the mutual mistrust between both parties.
(Fernando Heller | EuroEFE.Euractiv.es)
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