The People's Party (PP) wasted no time at all in correcting the words of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who said in an interview with El Periódico that he would maintain the dialogue table with the Catalan government - set up to resolve the Spain-Catalonia political conflict - if he wins the Spanish general election. Sources from the conservative party amended Feijóo's words to the newspaper and stated that the table "will be deactivated" in the event that they manage to remove Pedro Sánchez from the Moncloa government palace after July 23rd. "Any bilateral dialogue cannot refer to issues that affect all Spaniards", say the same PP sources. It has been almost a year since the bilateral table between the Catalan and Spanish governments last met: the last of the only three meetings it held was on July 27th, 2022.
The PP leader's interview stated it all eloquently enough. Asked directly about the possibility of maintaining the dialogue table with the Catalan Generalitat, Feijóo replied: "I have no interest in going against a table if it is constituted and if its fundamental objective is to deal with matters that do not affect others". That is to say, that he was not opposed to it if it addressed issues concerned with the relationship between the central administration and a regional administration in Catalonia. In the conversation, the PP candidate also asked for the continuation of a "fluid dialogue" with the Catalan government, of whom he requests that they return to the Conference of Presidents, the regular meetings between Spanish autonomous community leaders and central government.
What happened this Friday was that the People's Party, which has always maintained a belligerent position with regard to the dialogue table, immediately moved to put Feijóo in his place. In a statement sent this morning, the party stated that it would disconnect this space of institutional relations if it becomes the government. "The bilateral table that Sánchez set up with the independence movement, in which the governments of Spain and Catalonia are treated equally, will be deactivated if Feijóo obtains the confidence of the majority of Spaniards", affirm the sources, who recall that, with Catalonia, "there will be dialogue, but not submission". His predecessor as leader, Pablo Casado, ceaselessly demonized these meetings between the two governments. He referred to the negotiation device as "the humiliation table" because, as he put it, Pedro Sánchez's aim was "to humiliate Spain in order to remain in power with separatist votes".
A year without a dialogue table meeting
The dialogue table between the Catalan and Spanish governments has not met for almost a year. The last meeting also took place in a summer season, but not this one. On July 27th, 2022, the two executives, without Pedro Sánchez or Pere Aragonès, met in the Moncloa palace and signed the first agreements, two years and five months after the table was put into operation. It was the table's third meeting. Thus, they agreed on a text that addressed the protection and promotion of the Catalan language and a second that took steps to move towards dejudicialization. Despite this, an amnesty for those pusued by the law over the independence process, and recognition of the right to self-determination, the two major Catalan requests, were again left out of any agreement.