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.

It only remains to be officially announced, but everyone is clear that the Catalan-Aragonese candidacy for the Winter Olympics will not come to fruition due to the lack of understanding between governments. Faced with this scenario, the Catalan government has announced this Thursday that it is preparing an exclusively Catalan candidacy to opt for the sporting event. However, it does not seem a very viable option because the Spanish Olympic Committee (COE) always has the last word on the way the project would be set up and, so far, has always been reluctant to allowing a Catalan only bid to host the Winter Olympics.

A bid for the 2030 or 2034 Winter Olympics? Until now, all the parties, especially the Generalitat, the Aragonese government and the Spanish Olympic Committee (COE), were working with the goal of hosting the 2030 Winter Olympics, but Aragon's reluctance – which has already led the Catalan government to postpone the consultation on the bid – has caused delays, to the point that this Friday the COE has opened the door for the first time to presenting a candidacy for the 2034 Winter Olympics instead. COE president Alejandro Blanco also warned that if a "presentable" project is not achieved before April or May 2023, when the call ends, the candidacy will have to wait until the next Olympics. The Catalan Government's response has been immediate and Presidency councillor Laura Vilagrà has affirmed that they do not consider "any other scenario" than 2030: "We can make it", she said. All this happened two days after the president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), Thomas Bach, visited Madrid

Representatives of the Barcelona City Council and the Catalan government have met this Thursday at the Saló de Cent in the Catalan capital to address some of the challenges the city is facing. One of them is tourist overcrowding. In this bilateral meeting, chaired by Mayor Ada Colau and Presidency Councillor Laura Vilagrà, the two institutions have agreed to "create a working group to study the regulation of cruise ships and their environmental impact on tourism". The name of the new commission is important because it includes the term "regulation", a word that Presidency counillor Laura Vilagrà has avoided pronouncing during her appearance after the meeting. "The verb regulate, I don't use it. I don't want to use it. It is a taskforce", Vilagrà finally said, after journalists insitence to know whether limits on the arrival of cruise ships in Barcelona will be considered, as Colau demands. The councillor explained that data will be collected and analysed to find out "what is the best solution to reduce the environmental impact and tourist overcrowding caused by cruise ships". She has specified, for example, that the Government is finalising a tax on cruises and explained that money raised will be used to for environmental policies.

The first meeting between the Catalan and Spanish Governments to address Catalangate, a week after the outbreak of the scandal, lasted just over two hours and ended without the results sought by the Generalitat. The Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, met his Catalan counterpart, Laura Vilagrà, and afterwards spoke of a "cordial, sincere and correct" meeting with the idea of "looking for solutions" to the espionage scandal. But Vilagrà disagreed: "The meeting has not gone well. The explanations given are totally insufficient, vague, inconcrete and with uncertain results", she said. Bolaños, who guaranteed the "unequivocal will" of the Spanish government in "working to clarify the facts", has announced an internal investigation of the Intelligence Services would be launched "at the organisation's request" in order to analyse its actions. He also guaranteed the "full disposition" of Spanish intelligence services to "facilitate and collaborate" in an investigation that will also be initiated by the Spanish Ombudsman.

With the new stage of relations opened between the government of Catalonia and the Spanish government, there will be two key spaces in this legislature: the table of dialogue - to which the independentism wants to take the resolution of the political conflict - and the Bilateral Commission Generalitat-State. According to government sources, this last commission, that has to be renewed this Tuesday through a government agreement, will be presided by the Minister of Presidency, Laura Vilagrà, in addition to including the vice-president, Jordi Puigneró; the Minister of Economy, Jaume Giró; the General Secretary of Presidency, Núria Cuenca; the General Secretary of vice-presidency, Ricard Font, and the delegate in Madrid, Ester Capella. This appointment coincides with a first important appointment in terms of the relationship with the State: the first meeting between the President Pere Aragonès and the Spanish President, Pedro Sánchez, in Madrid.

The reissue of the ERC-JxCat coalition could make one think that practically nothing has changed behind the scenes in the Generalitat, but the change in presidents, who belongs to ERC instead of Junts, has meant profound changes in some of the Catalan administration's centres of power. For example, in the Palau de la Generalitat in recent days there has been a change of guard. A flock of JxCat posts have packed their bags to make way for an ERC unit. They are the people of Pere Aragonès's uttermost trust, who will work side by side with the president and experience the first republican presidency since the restoration of democracy most closely. They are all the president's men and women.