Carmen Calvo, the most senior of Spain's four deputy prime ministers, has this Wednesday vetoed the presence of the Catalan president, Quim Torra, at a hypothetical meeting of the Spain-Catalonia dialogue table, if he is disqualified from office by the Supreme Court. "He will not be able to sit at the table," she said. Calvo asserted that, regardless of the presence of the president, the table "will still exist", not because her government considers it as a "strategic" element but rather through a "deep political conviction" that the Catalan conflict must be resolved through dialogue. In any case, she said, "we will sit down with the people who are appropriate at each given time in the necessary conditions of legality."
"We are a government that always carries out politics in [a situation of] legality. The existence of the dialogue table is above and beyond the people who make it up, and if any member cannot sit at it because they are disqualified, the table, the dialogue, the re-encounter and the possibility of Catalonia getting out of its current situation are still valid", said the deputy PM in an interview with radio station Onda Cero.
"I don't know what the Supreme Court will decide, but what is clear is that this government acts with legality in its hand and carrying out politics within that legality," and therefore "if Torra is in the end disqualified from office he will not be able to sit at any table, but the table will exist”.
Calvo indicated that Torra "persevered" in his disobedience in his statement to the Catalan HIgh Court and warned that this behaviour is "something you can't do in a state governed by the rule of law." "It's pointless," she said.
According to Calvo, in the event that Torra were to again disobey a hypothetical disqualification, the Spanish government "wouldn't have to do anything" because "Spain is under a rule of law in which justice and the law react" and "no one can break the law."