Alberto Núñez Feijóo will maintain the bilateral dialogue table opened by the Government of Pedro Sánchez with the Generalitat de Catalunya of Pere Aragónes. “I have no interest in going against any table if it is constituted and its fundamental objective is to deal with issues that do not affect others,” says the PP candidate in the general elections on July 23 in an interview with ‘El Periódico de España’.
Government and Generalitat celebrate a Bilateral with discreet agreements and friction over the dialogue table
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The dialogue table between both governments was one of the measures promoted by Sánchez to normalize institutional relations with Catalonia after the failure of the independence process, 1-O and the application of article 155, which deprived the autonomous community of its self-government for the first time since its restoration after the death of the dictator Francisco Franco.
The meetings that are held have the objective, precisely, of unraveling the political conflict derived from the procés, but also of addressing stuck transfers of powers, such as the suburban train service or educational scholarships, pending for decades.
The bilateral table is not an improvised body by Pedro Sánchez, but is provided for in the Statute. It was established in 2007, under the Government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. But Mariano Rajoy paralyzed her during his term. Between 2011 and 2018 the president of the PP ignored her. The return of the PSOE to Moncloa, and the need to redirect the political situation with Catalonia, allowed its reactivation.
Now, Alberto Núñez Feijóo is committed to maintaining bilateral activity with the Generalitat, despite the fact that in the past he has actively criticized its mere existence. As president of the Xunta de Galicia, Feijóo criticized the fact that Catalonia is “rewarded” with a forum of these characteristics. He also denounced “gratifications” to the independence movement.
In fact, Feijóo brought together regional presidents, in an appointment outside the statutes or State institutions, to protest a hypothetical bilateral financing agreement between the Government and Catalonia that never took place.
Even the leader of the PP of Catalonia, Alejandro Fernández, promised just a year ago, already with Feijóo as leader of the PP, that if the Galician took Moncloa it would be the end of the dialogue table.
But Feijóo has changed the step. “I have no interest in going against any table if it is constituted and its main objective is to deal with issues that do not affect others,” he said in an interview in ‘El Periódico de España’. And he adds: “At a table I cannot deal with issues that affect others without notifying others. Yes, I will ask the Generalitat of Catalonia, in addition to maintaining a fluid dialogue with its authorities, to join the multilateral table that is the Conference of Presidents and the Council for fiscal and financial policy”.
Feijóo launched the 23J campaign this Thursday in Castelldefeles (Barcelona). In front of a thousand people, the PP candidate did not mention the bilateral table or his recipes to “sew”, as he put it, relations between Catalonia and the rest of Spain.
The leader of the PP did compare a couple of days ago in another interview with ETA with the Catalan independence movement, and pointed out that “the laws” put an end to terrorism in the Basque Country just as they did with the process.
