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Catalan president Pere Aragonès' visit to Colombia left an image that has not gone down well. Aragonès met this Monday with David Ricardo Racero, Speaker of the House of Representatives of the Republic of Colombia, in Bogotá. In the published photographs, the Catalan president and minister of Foreign Affairs, Meritxell Serret, can be seen seated on sofas, while Ricardo Racero is seated on a chair considerably higher than theirs, a distribution that breaks protocol, which states they should all be at the same height. However, that is not the worst thing about the scene. In the meeting room, there was a table with the Colombian flag, the Spanish flag, and next to it, much smaller, the Catalan flag. The main problem is that in the photograph, which was shared by the Catalan government, the Catalan and Spanish flags have completely disappeared, as has the representative of the embassy.

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Meeting between Pere Aragonès and David Ricardo Racero in Bogotá
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Photo of the meeting between Aragonès and Racero where the Catalan flag has disappeared

Josep Lluís Alay, head of Carles Puigdemont's office, criticized this scene and Aragonès' attitude. Through Twitter, Alay defended that "you can never accept a meeting like this. This treatment is openly hostile. We all lose".

Meeting postponed between Petro and Aragonès

Catalan president Pere Aragonès was supposed to meet this Monday with Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s prime minister, at Nariño palace, but the meeting was postponed at the last minute. The Colombian government claimed it was due to "a relevant issue of public order and last-minute violence in Cauca", in reference to the miner's protests in southern Colombia. However, shortly after the suspension of the meeting, David Racero, Speaker of the House of Representatives, tweeted a photograph with Petro explaining that they had met with opposition groups to agree on the healthcare reform, one of the government's key projects. The Catalan government said these were the two reasons that ended up preventing the meeting with the Colombian prime minister.

Nine-day tour of South America

Aragonès began a nine-day trip to Latin America on Sunday, accompanied by minister Meritxell Serret. His first stop was Colombia, where on Monday he announced a new delegation of the Catalan government based in the country. Aragonès will also travel to Uruguay, Buenos Aires and Chile. The programme of the Catalan delegation includes interviews with government representatives from the different countries and personalities such as José Mujica, former president of Uruguay, as well as meetings to discuss cooperation and human rights projects, as well as business meetings.