2023-12-02 20:13:11
Representatives of the Spanish ruling party PSOE and the Catalan party Junts of separatist leader Carles Puigdemont began confidential talks in Switzerland on Saturday about a solution to the year-long conflict. The first meeting “went well,” said PSOE negotiator Santos Cerdán shortly before the return flight from Geneva to Madrid. The Socialist said nothing about the content of the talks or the question of whether Puigdemont himself took part. The exact location of the meeting near Geneva was also kept secret.
Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez had agreed to the negotiations in order to secure the votes of Puigdemont’s Junts party in parliament in Madrid for his re-election as prime minister a good two weeks ago. Puigdemont wants Catalonia to secede from Spain, Sánchez wants to prevent this and defuse the conflict through dialogue and concessions.
Amnesty still has to be approved by parliament
Junts had ensured that the talks with the PSOE were accompanied by a neutral organization that verified possible results and monitored their implementation. Officially, who took on this role has so far been kept secret.
In 2017 he tried to break Catalonia out of the Spanish state with an unconstitutional independence referendum: Carles Puigdemont: Image: AP
RTVE reported that it was the renowned Swiss Henri Dunant Center for Humanitarian Dialogue (HD or HDC). This private foundation based in Geneva, which claims to have been discreetly mediating in conflicts worldwide for decades, had already accompanied the dissolution of the Basque terrorist organization ETA in Spain and verified it in 2018.
According to media reports, the meeting took place outside Spain so that Puigdemont, who is in exile in Belgium, could possibly attend in person. He would be arrested immediately in his home country because in 2017, as then regional government head, he tried to break Catalonia out of the Spanish state with an unconstitutional independence referendum.
Sánchez has also promised an amnesty to Junts and the second separatist Catalan party ERC for his re-election. However, this still has to be decided by Parliament, which could take months.
Spain’s conservative opposition is storming against concessions to Catalans. Opposition leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo from the conservative People’s Party PP repeatedly warned of a threat to Spanish unity, democracy and the separation of powers.
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