ERC and PSOE say they have "confirmed progress in defining the instruments necessary to channel the political conflict on the future of Catalonia" in the third meeting between their negotiating teams, held today in Barcelona. In a joint statement, the two parties add they will tackle the conflict from a position of "respect and mutual institutional recognition", and say they have found "notable concurrence" with respect to the "recuperation of social, civil and labour rights".
The third official meeting, but the first in Barcelona, it follows a secret extra meeting yesterday between the parties. The meeting today took place in AMB headquarters in Zona Franca. It lasted two and a half hours and involved the same negotiating teams as the previous times: Gabriel Rufián, Marta Vilalta and Josep Maria Jové for ERC, and José Luis Ábalos, Ariadna Lastra and Salvador Illa for PSOE.
Sources from the two parties say that negotiations are ongoing, but that there is no firm date for further talks, unlike following the previous two formal meetings.
The two parties, like last week, released a joint statement about progress; after their first meeting they had issued separate releases. The most notable development in this third meeting is that they say they've made progress in "defining the instruments necessary to channel the political conflict on the future of Catalonia, which [they] wish to tackle from respect and mutual institutional recognition". As it happens, the objective for Oriol Junqueras' party this time was precisely for there to be "institutional recognition".
In the previous two formal meetings, PSOE had accepted the existence of a "political conflict" and agreed that a "political path" has to be activated to solve it. ERC was asking for a negotiating table between governments, where everything is up for discussion, with clear timetables and compliance guarantees, for them to support reinvesting Pedro Sánchez as Spanish prime minister.
The two parties want to continue negotiating, but to do so more discretely from now on to favour progress. Talks will likely last at least another two weeks, with ERC waiting for a decision from the Court of Justice of the European Union on Junqueras' immunity as an MEP.