Spanish government spokesperson Isabel Celaá says that Pedro Sànchez's executive is not "nervous" about next Friday's cabinet meeting in Barcelona, which she expects to take place in a context of "normality".
Before participating in a conference organized by a regional branch of the Socialist (PSOE) party in Salamanca, Celaá told the media that the government was "working so that everything would be normal, to provide the greatest normality and serenity" for the meeting.
"We're not nervous," she responded when asked directly about whether there was any nervousness, given the situation in Catalonia and the uncertainty created about a possible meeting between the Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez and the Catalan president Quim Torra. For the minister-spokesperson, relations between the two administrations "are being established in a natural way" with the aim of achieving a "normalization".
In fact, on Friday, the Catalan government opened the door to negotiate with the Spanish executive on the "terms and contents" of a meeting between the two governments. This occurred through a letter signed by the Catalan vice president, Pere Aragonès, responding to an earlier letter from his Spanish counterpart, Carmen Calvo, proposing a meeting between Sánchez and Torra, coinciding with the holding of the cabinet meeting.
The vast majority of Spanish cabinet meetings are held at the seat of the Spanish government, the Palacio de la Moncloa, in Madrid. However there is provision for them to be held anywhere on Spanish territory, and the proposal to hold a meeting in Barcelona emerged shortly after the Pedro Sánchez government came to power, as a gesture in response to the ongoing Spanish-Catalan crisis. Last month, the Catalan government proposed that a full bilateral summit between Catalan and Spanish administrations be scheduled to coincide with the Spanish cabinet's visit to Barcelona, but this was discarded by Madrid.