Exactly sixteen years have passed since the last and only time that the European Parliament discussed whether Catalan could be spoken in the European Parliament. The debate ended with the Bureau slamming the door on the request made by the Spanish government presided by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Since then, the European Parliament has not discussed the issue again despite pressure from Catalan MEPs. The trend, however, could change this autumn, following Pedro Sánchez's governmentps commitment to ask the European institution to allow Catalan to be spoken in the plenary. It is one of the pacts reached by the Generalitat and the Spanish government this month of July in the latest meeting of the negotiating table. "The Spanish government will ask the presidency of the European Parliament to consider Catalan a language to be used in the plenary and for the purposes of exercising the right to petition the institution," the two executives wrote in the agreement to give Catalan a boost. Now, does this petition have a chance of succeeding?

Negotiating table will return in the last week of July. This has been agreed by Catalan president Pere Aragonès his Spanish counterpart Pedro Sánchez in the meeting they held this afternoon at the Spanish presidential palace for an hour and three quarters. The two delegations will meet again ten months after the negotiations were resumed, at a meeting at the Palau de la Generalitat on September 15th. That day the two presidents met face to face and, subsequently, the meeting on the dialogue table was held, the first since Aragonès became president of the Generalitat. This time it will be held in Madrid.

When Pere Aragonès enters the Spanish presidential palace this Friday he will find an exultant Pedro Sánchez, hugely self-confident and convinced that the Catalan question is only a small obstacle compared to all the ones he has had to overcome. And there can be no doubt that he has reason to be satisfied. After the Andalusian setback, the Socialists designed a final stretch of their mandate that should balance the scales. The NATO summit was a resounding organisational success and showcased Sánchez internationally. And the state of the nation debate helped him recover the political initiative and breathe new energy into the left. The PP's abstention this Thursday to the second decree of measures against the consequences of the war is a final victory in a fantastic week. It shows that it is he who has control of the state and the electoral calendar, and he has a year and a half ahead of him to gradually suffocate Feijóo.

This Friday the Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, and the Catalan president, Pere Aragonès, will meet, and a new date has to be set for the negotiation table to meet again. The negotiation with the State has been revived after the Catalangate crisis, but the strategy continues without satisfying one of the parties in the Catalan coalition government, Together for Catalonia (JxCat). Its spokeswoman in the Spanish parliament, Míriam Nogueras, has made this clear again this Wednesday in the debate on the state of the nation, again showing her opposition and attacking the Spanish government and JxCat's coalition partner, Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC). She reproached ERC for having "moved away" from the goal of independence after having opened the dialogue with the State, and accused the Spanish government of not wanting to open a real dialogue and trying to "make a fool" of the independence movement. "JxCat will only sit down at a real negotiation process," Nogueras warned.

Friday July 15 at the Spanish presidential palace in Madrid. This is the date and place chosen for the meeting between Catalan president Pere Aragonès and Spanish president Pedro Sánchez, in what should be the meeting which definitively restores relations between the two governments. These have been deeply affected by a series of events, most recently the Catalangate spying scandal. The date was decided this Friday in a face-to-face meeting held at the Palau de la Generalitat by Catalan and Spanish Presidency ministers, Laura Vilagrà and Félix Bolaños.

Generalitat president Pere Aragonès is redoubling the pressure on Pedro Sánchez. The head of the executive has launched a warning this Sunday, telling the Spanish president that unless progress is made in the resolution of the conflict between Catalonia and Spain, ERC could halt its support of the Socialists in the Spanish parliament. In an interview with Público, Aragonès recalled that the support for the head of the Spanish executive came about "because there was a commitment to move towards a resolution". "If this commitment is in question or does not materialise, I think everyone will understand that it will have consequences for ERC's political positioning in the Spanish Parliament," he said.

Concern is growing in ERC over Pedro Sánchez's delaying of the dialogue table. After the conference by Catalan president Pere Aragonès and ERC spokesman in the Spanish Parliament Gabriel Rufián warned he has the "suspicion" that the PSOE is being "tempted to let the opportunity pass", the only response from the Spanish president has been that it "always" has an "outstretched hand towards the negotiating table and the Bilateral Commission", which will meet this Friday in Barcelona. Yet both Rufián and Aragonès have warned that the Socialists continuity in government depends on advances in dialogue, thus conditioning ERC's support of the Spanish government.

Parts of the independence movement felt discomfort at the very least after Catalan president Pere Aragonès's conference yesterday, which aimed to recover the movement's unity of action. JxCat agreed with the call for unity launched by the president, but reproached him for not sharing the content of the speech previously –which the president's office denies–, that he did not make specifics about his roadmap towards independence and that he made no references to the 2017 Independence Referendum. The party also interprets that Aragonès linked exile and pardons to negotiation with the State. Neither the pro-independence organisation ANC nor anticapitalists CUP were any more satisfied, but rather the opposite. In addition, the Spanish government has reacted coldly and still has not announced the date of the next meeting of the dialogue table, despite repeated requests from the president.

Coinciding with the first anniversary of the elections that brought him to the Palau de la Generalitat, Catalan president Pere Aragonès, wanted to make an analysis of the current political moment, combined with a more in-depth speech about his project for the country. Regarding the first point, Aragonès admitted that the negotiating table with the State to resolve the political conflict is experiencing a "deadlock", a "moment of difficulty", which he attributes to Spanish government's "lack of courage" when it comes to articulating a proposal for Catalan society.

You don't have to be particularly astute to realize that the PSOE is uncomfortable with the Catalan question in general and with the dialogue table in particular and with the dialogue table in particular. One only has to listen to Pedro Sánchez's declarations, who in the summer said this was a historic opportunity for reconciliation between Catalans and Spaniards but now only sees it as a nuisance, a hindrance to the narrative he wants to impose of a government focused on the recovery of the economy and health.

Pere Aragonès has not found the answer he was looking for from the Spanish government. The minister spokeswoman, Isabel Rodríguez, has asked him to "look away from a 2017 that was so painful for Catalonia" and has not put forward any proposals for the dialogue table Aragonès demanded this Wednesday at a conference in Madrid. The head of Territorial Policy attributes Aragonès's words to a "partisan strategy" and has postponed the next meeting between governments until the sixth wave of the pandemic is overcome, the same position Spanish president Pedro Sánchez defended in recent weeks.

Pere Aragonès puts pressure on Pedro Sánchez from Madrid to move forward at the dialogue table. The Catalan president has given a conference in the Spanish capital in which he has asked the president of the State government –without using his name– "what his proposal is" to resolve the political conflict and has asked him not to use the threat of PP and Vox as an "excuse" not to take advantage of "the opportunity". According to Aragonès, the current context provides an ideal moment to resolve Catalonia's fit in Spain and has urged the PSOE to face it. "Dare to win" but also to face the "possibility of losing," he stressed in his speech. The Republican leader has defended that Catalonia's belonging to the State has to be decided "democratically and not by means of imposition".

The negotiating table is not part of Pedro Sánchez's priorities and he does not hide it. In his 2021 balance speech he only referred to it when asked by journalists and he did it to downplay its urgency, and he did not mention it on Friday during the Socialist Party's federal committee. Using the management of the pandemic as a shield, the Spanish president has again refused on Monday to set a date for the new meeting between the Generalitat and the State so as not to "tie himself up", as he argued in an interview with Cadena SER. But he has assured, however, that the table will be convened at least twice this 2022. ERC, meanwhile, continues to press for the meeting to be "as soon as possible", despite the fact that it wants to avoid a new controversy over dates.

The President of the Spanish government, Pedro Sánchez, has gone out of his way this Wednesday to stress that the Catalan conflict is not now among his "urgent priorities" and has refused to confirm whether the negotiating table would meet again during the first weeks of the year. The most worrying thing, however, is not so much what he says as his tone, visibly annoyed, without even concealing the fact that the Catalan issue is more of a hindrance than a service to him right now, and that if it were up to him he would park it definitively without taking any further steps. Everyone understands that right now the priority of all administrations is the management of the pandemic, but sending this kind of message is a mistake, because the Catalan political conflict will not disappear in the short or medium term and, moreover, the parliamentary stability of Sánchez's government depends on Republican Left of Catalonia's (ERC) 13 MPs.

The Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) and the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) have finally reached an agreement over the new Spanish media law, which also includes ERC's support for the budget budget. "ERC protects Catalan in the media law and facilitates the approval of the state budget to give impetus to the negotiation process," ERC reported in a brief statement.

ERC president Oriol Junqueras visits the ARA four months after his pardon and release from prison.

Keeping the path of dialogue alive is one of the main objectives of Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) – and, therefore, President Pere Aragonès – in this term. Given two years to prove the negotiation with the State bares fruits by the pro-independence majority that sustains the Government, the Catalan president has avoided holding the Spanish president responsible for former Catalan president Carles Puigdemont's arrest in Sardinia on Friday, contrary to the latter's claims. "I will not go into speculating whether the Spanish government was in the know, but I have no evidence that it was the case," he said in an interview with La 2 and Radio 4, in which he has made clear that blame for Puigdemont's situation is the Spanish judicial apparatus.

The Catalan president, Pere Aragonès, and the Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, on Wednesday kicked off a negotiation process between the two governments that has been born amidst many doubts and uncertainties, besieged by opponents on both sides, and with not very encouraging precedents. Even so, this is a path that must be explored in depth, especially after the lessons of October 2017, and which, above all, must be faced with the utmost seriousness and rigour by both sides.

Whether it is families debating where to go on holiday, or presidents discussing a peace deal, negotiation is a critical and frequently misunderstood part of our lives, and the natural biproduct of conflict. Managing – rather than eradicating – that conflict can define the difference between war and peace, prosperity and stagnation. Most of us are risk and negotiation adverse. This aversion is strangely pronounced when it comes to gaining something.  Greece and Northern Macedonia took 25 years to reach agreement on the country’s name for that reason. Essentially, we aren’t ready to invest as much political will into gaining something positive, as we are to avoiding something negative (loss of territory, pride, resources). As negotiators across Spain approach a period of crucial talks over their future legal arrangements, it is worth looking at some principles of good negotiation and how we might avoid the mistakes of the past.  

There is still a long way to go before the dialogue table - reactivated this week - actually negotiates. The opposite, say experts in political conflict negotiations, would be a mistake. First there has to be dialogue, and a lot of it. Even going into personal territory. "To talk about everything without compromises in informal contacts" is the recipe by Francisco Diez, one of the first mediators in Argentina. He has been working on political and social conflicts for more than 25 years, and has done so from the Carter Center - an organisation created by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter -, the United Nations Development Programme, the University of Notre Dame and, currently, from the UN. Now, he says, the Generalitat and Moncloa are in the "pre-negotiation" phase, which is "as, or more important" than the future negotiation. There have already been some steps, such as recognising the conflict and the predisposition to sit down. Before starting to talk, however, some preconditions are needed.