Catalan president Quim Torra has once again telephoned Pedro Sánchez this Sunday and the Spanish prime minister has still not responded - the second time that this has occurred in 24 hours. Yesterday, Torra also tried to call the head of the Spanish executive, after the Catalan government and several key mayors had made a call for immediate and unconditional dialogue between the Spanish and Catalan leaderships.
Today's call was a re-run of Saturday's situation. The Catalan president's office called the Moncloa, the prime ministerial residence in Madrid, and Sánchez's staff responded that they were trying to locate the PM.
Twenty minutes later, Madrid called back, to give the message to say that it was not possible to connect Torra with Sánchez.
On Saturday, Spanish government sources stated that Sanchez would not talk to Torra until the Catalan leader "strongly" condemned violence and in the evening, the president sent a strongly-worded letter to the head of the Spanish executive, declaring that both he personally and the independence movement "have always fought against and condemned all violence."
However, today, after the second consecutive presidential call in two days, the Spanish government responded with the same argument. In this case, it was the Spanish justice minister, Fernando Grande Marlaska, who called on Torra to condemn violence.