Antoni Castellà, political spokesman for Democrats of Catalonia, member of the JxCat group in Parliament and spokesman for the Consejo de la República led by Carles Puigdemont, has challenged Pedro Sánchez to negotiate “Catalan Brexit” if he wants to be invested as the new president of Gobierno
In an interview with EFE, Castellà stated that, although the key to the investiture is in the hands of the seven JxCat deputies in Congress, now “the PSOE and PP have the ball in their court”, since they are their candidates for the Moncloa who must say if they are willing to open a negotiation, not on more regional powers, but on the “sovereignty” of Catalonia.
Given the silence that JxCat has imposed on itself at the start of the investiture talks, Castellà’s is one of the only voices in this political space willing to position itself, since, although it is part of the Junts group in Parliament and He is a close collaborator of Puigdemont in the Council of the Republic, he has more room for manoeuvre, since his party is Demòcrates, a pro-independence split of the extinct Unió Democràtica.
Castellà, who belongs to the independence sector that most vehemently claims the validity of the unilateral referendum of October 1, 2017 and who presented himself as a JxCat candidate for the Senate in the general elections of July 23, has urged the PSOE to “change the frame of mind”.
Catalonia, he has warned, did not organize 1-O to now negotiate “more powers or an economic concert”, but rather “there is a before and after” of 2017.
The “most relevant” negotiation
“Any negotiation that has to do with powers we already did with the new Statute”, which ended up being cut by the Constitutional Court, he recalled.
After 23J, he said, a “historic” negotiation could be opened, the most relevant since the Transition”, in which “the independence movement may be willing to discuss self-determination and amnesty, the conditions, the deadlines, how the assets are agreed upon, what temporality of co-sovereignty can there be: all this is negotiable”.
Instead, in his opinion, Sánchez must be clear that it is not negotiable that “Catalonia is a nation and that its sovereignty rests with the people of Catalonia.”
“The great underlying discussion is: are you willing to negotiate the Catalan ‘Brexit’? We are, but you must situate yourself in this mental framework. Any other framework is not acceptable, because it places us before 1-O, and this does not It would make sense,” he stressed.
The constitutional framework
Faced with the appeals of the socialists to the independence movement to lower their “maximalist” conditions and seek an agreement within the Constitution, he has pointed out that “the constitutional framework is the corset that the PSOE itself imposes.”
“It is not our problem. I put on the corset of the right to self-determination and amnesty, they put on the corset of the constitutional framework,” he argued.
In his opinion, the independence movement must be “coherent with what it has defended during the campaign” of 23J and “comply exactly with what it has said”, without lowering the bar of its conditions.
“This will be the cotton test to find out if the PSOE, the PP, the Crown, the State take seriously that this is a negotiation in terms of geopolitics,” he added.
Invites PSOE and Sumar to reflect
Until now, the PSOE has defended that “global sovereignty and territorial integrity is not negotiable”, so “if they do not move from this framework, there is no possibility of an agreement”, it has warned.
Those from PSOE and Sumar warn that an electoral repetition would imply giving PP and Vox a second chance to achieve a sufficient majority, according to Castellà, “must decide if they prefer” to discuss the “recognition of Catalonia as a nation” or “give it a chance on the right”.
What is in question is, in his opinion, “whether a whole sector of the left prefers a good result from Vox, rather than recognizing the Catalan national fact.”
“This is the reflection that the Spanish left should make,” he stressed.
2023-08-12 09:48:25
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