The Catalan president-in-exile, Carles Puigdemont, has demanded "diligence" from the Spanish government in its effrots to obtain official EU language status for Catalan, after this Tuesday's vote was postponed due to the impossibility to overcome the reluctance of several countries. "Today, Catalan has not been recognized as an official language of the EU, but the path to achieve this must be irreversible and without having to wait too long, because we have already waited enough," affirmed Puigdemont in a video published on social media, in which he also thanked the Spanish foreign minister for his "interest" in the proposal.
The president-in-exile acknowledged that "we have never got this far" in the process of making Catalan official in the EU and emphasized that no member state has vetoed the proposal. "Never before have there been so many countries in the Union that were favourable to the idea", he emphasized. "But this is not enough, and the Spanish state knows it, it knows it has work to do and it knows it must do it diligently, and without wasting time because the opportunity is, precisely, now," he remarked.
The pro-independence leader thanked Spanish foreign minister, José Manuel Albares, for his "interest" in "defending the arguments that support the request". "A request that is shared, quite apart from all that we represent politically," he stressed. Despite the thanks, Puigdemont then affirmed that the doubts expressed by the member states "could have been resolved beforehand" and pointed out that Pedro Sánchez's executive has not been able to "listen to the European Union". "Perhaps because it is the first time that Spain has asked other members of the Union to support the Catalan language or perhaps also because of the lack of power of conviction, the fact is that the proposal of the Spanish state has not succeeded and has not prospered in the terms we expected", he stated.
In this line, Puigdemont stated that he will be "very attentive to the work that remains pending". In fact, Albares himself has announced that Spain will prioritize the officialization of Catalan in the EU ahead of Galician and Basque, with the aim of overcoming obstacles that some of the 27 have raised over the incorporation of three languages at once. Although he announced this plan, the Spanish minister avoided specifying when this proposal will materialize, only affirming that "the sooner, the better".
More thanks from Puigdemont
In the video released, Carles Puigdemont also thanked the technical teams and the Catalan language NGO Plataforma per la Léngua for the "extraordinary work done", through campaigns such as SayYes, which has had the support of personalities such as Pep Guardiola, Kilian Jornet and Joan Laporta. Likewise, the president-in-exile extended his thanks "to all the people who have been involved up to the very top".