It has eclipsed everything: the suspension of the planned expansion of Barcelona's El Prat airport, announced on Wednesday by the Spanish government, has been trending today in Spanish politics. This Thursday, president Pere Aragonès publicly accused the Pedro Sánchez administration of "blackmailing" his Catalan government to impose its own plans. And the response of the central executive was not long in coming, from spokesperson Isabel Rodríguez. She answered Aragonès's criticism with the assertion that "he is not capable of explaining how he let an investment in his land of 1.7 billion euros get away".
In a media conference, the spokesperson for the Spanish executive spoke along the same lines as transport minister Raquel Sánchez in press interviews earlier - without repeating Sánchez's dismissal of the Catalan uncertainty as "childishness that we can't allow". Rodríguez said that they had not taken the decision to suspend the investment willingly, but had done so because "there was no key support from the Catalan government for a project which would be transformative for the country and for Catalonia, and would generate employment in a sustainable development framework".
Despite her criticisms of Catalonia's Generalitat for its resistance to the expansion project, the Spanish government sought to disassociate it from the dialogue table on the political conflict, which it says should not be affected by the turbulence. Although Isabel Rodríguez once again failed to clarify the unknowns over the key political meeting - the precise date and whether prime minister Sánchez will attend - she stated that "work is being completed" for next week's meeting and that they are continuing to work "for recovery and re-encounter in Catalonia". And she stressed: "We maintain the agenda and the need for this meeting. The Spanish government has given clear signals that we want to establish a dialogue with Catalonia, that the closeness between Catalans must be recovered, which can be done to a great extent from political commitment, and we will continue making progress."
Aragonès, outraged
"Outraged", "perplexed", over a "pressure ploy", a "veto"... Catalan president Pere Aragonès was visibly annoyed this Thursday morning and said so when he spoke to the media on the Spanish government's decision to suspend the plan to expand the El Prat airport. He attributed the move to an attempt by the Spanish state to impose its own will as well as to the internal differences within Pedro Sánchez's executive, assuring reporters that this crisis will not derail the dialogue table on the political conflict to be held next week. “There are a lot of people who want the negotiating table to fail, I won’t be the one to make it do so,” he advised.
In his appearance in the Generalitat palace, the president, in an indignant tone, went through what he described as changes in the Spanish government's position after the agreement on the airport expansion was reached on August 2nd, explaining that yesterday, unexpectedly, Spanish minister Raquel Sánchez publicly communicated the breaking off of the deal. He said that Spain's government had broken that pact "unfairly and unilaterally" and reiterated the blackmail employed by the Spanish executive and the airport operator AENA .