Self-determination, never
President of Spain says he would never be open to Catalan self-determination, only days after agreeing to facilitated dialogue
Taking refuge in his international agenda, the Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, was able to avoid being present whe talks with the Generalitat ground to a halt, leaving it to Carmen Calvo, his vice-president. After the freeze, Calvo warned that “we will never accept a referendum on self-determination”, and then just 24 hours before the Spanish right-wing march in Plaza Colón in Madrid, Sanchez reaffirmed the statement, saying, “the self-determination demanded by Catalan independentism does not fit into the Constitution and we will never accept it”.
Sánchez’s flat out refusal comes just after having accepted the proposal of a facilitator sitting at state level discussions between his government and the pro-independence Catalan government. At the same time, he censored the right-to-decide as a topic of discussion. In a speech in Barakaldo (Vizcaya) he called independence a “road to nowhere” and said the “only possible way” to resolve the crisis with Catalonia was through dialogue and the constitution. In order to try to suppress accusations of weakness from his right-wing critics in the Spanish congress, he talked down the pro-independence protest in Madrid happening today.
Yesterday, the Catalan president, Quim Torra, called for “courage and bravery” to “move on with this dialogue, and determination to resolve the political conflict in Catalonia”, and demanded to sit down and “specifically” discuss “the right to self-determination”. He expressed disappointment that the central government had broken off talks, and requested they start again, with “guarantees, a schedule and real content”.