The dialogue table between the governments of Spain and Catalonia will meet this Wednesday at 10 am, according to the two executives. The meeting will be held, as planned, in the Moncloa government palace in Madrid. Although it had already been noted that the meeting would be on Wednesday, the Catalan government was assuring as late as noon today, in its regular Tuesday press conference, that no date had yet been set because there were still agreements to be finalized. Catalan government sources emphasize that the agreements to be announced tomorrow will focus on the objective of putting an end to the judicialization of the independence process. However, they admit that the judicial persecution of Catalan in schools and the proceedings at the Court of Accounts could also be part of tomorrow's agenda.
The Catalan leadership has had to introduce changes to its delegation, of which representatives of coalition partner Junts do not form part, to reach a balance with the four representatives who will take part on the Spanish side. Finally, as announced by the president, Pere Aragonès, during today's cabinet meeting, four Catalan ministers will attend. Two of them were appointed to be part of the delegation when the table last met, in September 2021: presidency minister Laura Vilagrà, and enterprise and labour minister Roger Torrent.
Elena and Garriga
Aragonès is also an ex officio member of the table, according to the agreement that was approved by the government in September, but neither the Spanish PM nor the Catalan president will attend this meeting, so he has delegated his representation to his interior minister, Joan Ignatius Elena.
Finally, the fourth representative of the Generalitat at the dialogue table will be the minister of culture, Natàlia Garriga, who will participate as a guest. In fact, Garriga was arrested in the police operation on September 20th, 2017, in the build-up to the Catalan independence referendum, and is under judicial investigation for her involvement in the organization of the October 1st vote.
With the incorporation of these two ministers by decision of the leader Aragonès, the Catalan government has avoided reopening the debate on the composition of its delegation which would have meant passing a new cabinet agreement on the matter.
Representing the Spanish government will be: the second deputy PM and labour and social economy minister Yolanda Díaz; the Spanish minister for the PM's department, Félix Bolaños; the territorial policy minister who is also government spokesperson, Isabel Rodríguez; and the culture and sports minister, Miquel Iceta. Thus, there will be one representative of Unidas Podemos and three from the PSOE.
The table for dialogue on the political conflict between Spain and Catalonia, agreed to by the Pedro Sánchez government in January 2020 as the way forward in Spain's worst constitutional crisis in the post-Franco era, has scarcely met. It had an initial meeting in February 2020, and then a "restart" meeting in September last year.