Ábalos claims the PP abandoned Catalonia

The Minister of Development and the PSOE’s Secretary of Organization, José Luis Ábalos, speaking yesterday at the PSC’s annual Festa de la Rosa in Gavà, blamed the PP for having “made the state independent of Catalonia years ago. According to Ábalos, the right abandoned Catalonia so much and for so long that it has become ingrained and every time a minister came to Catalonia, it was like a foreigner visiting,” he said

With Pedro Sánchez in Canada at present, the PSC leader Miquel Iceta, was accompanied in Gavà by Ábalos and Minister Meritxell Batet. Iceta wanted to quell the fires lit by Teresa Cunillera yesterday over possible pardons for the imprisoned Catalan politicians but in the end, added more wood to the fire by asking and answering: “Why are they in such a legal mess? Hell, it’s because they ignored us! It has to be said. If they had paid attention to what the Catalan socialists warned them about, we would not be in the mess we are in now.” The socialist leader went further and reproached the independence movement and parties, especially JuntsXCAT for at least “a little humility in recognising that they were wrong,” in choosing the unilateral declaration, “which is simply not going anywhere”, asking for “fewer pilgrimages to Waterloo and more to parliament.”