Aragonès and Sánchez agree to meet in Madrid this month

Barcelona / MadridFirst telephone contact between the new president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, and the president of the Spanish government, Pedro Sánchez. So far they had exchanged a few messages, mostly courtesy messages over the recent inauguration of the Catalan president, but a long conversation between the two was pending, which took place this Friday. As explained by the two parties, it has been a 40-minute call in which, among other things, they agreed to a face-to-face meeting in Madrid in June. "It has been a fluid and productive conversation," both sides agree.

A relevant detail of this first contact is that the two governments decided to send the media the same communiqué, one in Spanish and the other in Catalan, and sent within a minute of each other. According to the joint statement, the two presidents have addressed "the current political situation" and have shared the objective "of moving towards overcoming common challenges through dialogue". In other words, they spoke about the Catalan political conflict, one of the great challenges of their respective presidencies, and gave a new opportunity to the path of dialogue. The dialogue will begin its course in this first meeting between presidents, but that should be a stepping stone towards the reactivation of the negotiating table between the Generalitat and the State, dormant since February 26, 2020.

When could this meeting take place? There are 26 days left, and neither side wants to give any clues yet. It is true, however, that next week the Spanish president has a very full agenda. On Monday he is travelling precisely to Barcelona for a Foment del Treball event, although no meeting is planned. From Tuesday to Thursday he has a tour in Latin America, with official trips to Costa Rica and Argentina. Be that as it may, the commitment has already been assumed by the parties and the first meeting between the two presidents will have to take place in June. It will not be, however, the first time they speak, not even the first time they meet at the Moncloa. In December 2019 they already saw each other in secret in order to negotiate Sánchez's investiture and the creation of the dialogue table.

This Friday, in the inauguration of the assembly of the AMI celebrated in Tarragona, Aragonès once again insisted on the necessity of placing the Catalan conflict within the scope of the politics and not the courts. He believes this was confirmed by the Committee on Legal Affairs of the Council of Europe's report, which came out on Thursday, and called for the release of political prisoners and the withdrawal of the European arrest warrants. "Repression against independence does not find support outside the state," said the president. He has also claimed that state institutions "would need to read [the EU report] very carefully" which "urges" the state to seek a "political solution based on citizens' vote".

The meeting between Sánchez and Aragonès in Madrid is expected to be the first step before the council of ministers decides on pardons and then on the dialogue table, which may well not be convened until after the holidays in September. The Spanish Government does not want the meeting with the president of the Generalitat to be interpreted as a formality for the measure of grace, nor that the pardons are the necessary piece to reconvene the table of dialogue. So he hopes that there will be some space between the appointments.

Pandemic and European funds

Both Sánchez and Aragonès are interested that not all their relationship revolves around the political conflict: the socialist in order to try to show that not everything that affects the relationshpi between the State and the Catalan administration has to do with issues that generate wear - such as pardons-, and the Republican because he is just beginning his term and wants to get the first tangible results. Thus, in their conversation this Friday they also spoke of the "need to definitively win the battle against coronavirus and achieve economic reconstruction", especially through European funds. In the meeting in Madrid, the Catalan president also wants to address the expansion project of El Prat airport, which the State is leading and is generating controversy.

In short, Aragonès wants to establish two types of dialogue with Sánchez. One that is only about the political conflict and that takes place at the dialogue table, and another on investments and competence issues to be developed in bilateral commissions that are provided for in the Statute of Autonomy and that have been paralysed for years. His meeting with Sánchez at the Moncloa should reveal whether the Spanish president accepts this dynamic