MADRID – El primer ministre espanyol, Pedro Sánchez, va mantenir dimecres una reunió molt esperada amb el seu homòleg regional a Catalunya per intentar posar fi al conflicte territorial espanyol, quatre anys després d’un intent de secessió català fallit i 18 mesos després d’ a first round of negotiations was abruptly reduced by the coronavirus pandemic.
The talks between Sánchez and Pere Aragonès, the regional leader of Catalonia, mark the most significant attempt to reach an agreement in what has been the most divisive issue in Spanish politics over the last decade: the fate of Catalonia, a region of 7.5 million people are divided in half over whether to become a republic.
Analysts warned that negotiations would also be fraught with setbacks. While Mr. Aragonès, a moderate pro-independence politician, took office this year promising dialogue, he has faced skepticism from Catalonia’s hard-line parties.
The ruptures were shown on Wednesday when one of the parties, Junts per Catalunya, did not send delegates after Mr. Aragonès rejected his first elections.
“The biggest obstacle will be the divisions of the pro-independence parties,” said José Ignacio Torreblanca, a professor of politics at the National University of Distance Education in Madrid.
The negotiations are taking place in the shadow of a conflict that reached a boiling point in 2017 and is still reaching Spain.
That year, the government of Catalonia organized an independence referendum challenging the government of Spain and its courts, which declared the vote illegal. Police officers confiscated ballots and even beat people who tried to vote. Some of the organizers were arrested and received lengthy prison sentences for sedition.
Both sides remain bitter, but signs of thawing have appeared this year.
After an election in February, Mr. Aragonés took office as the new regional leader. He still seeks independence, but pledged to reduce the conflict with Spain through talks. In June, Mr. Sanchez pardoned the nine pro-independence activists who had been convicted of sedition.
In an interview after the talks, Mr Aragonés said his position was reduced to two main goals: a general amnesty for pro-independence leaders who said she had been charged with crimes related to her political actions; and the holding of a new referendum that would be negotiated with the Spanish government, a proposal that Sanchez has so far rejected as unconstitutional.
Aragonés said he wanted to explore the possibility of creating legislation in Spain that would legalize this vote. “The important thing is that there is political will” to reach an agreement, he said.
The issue of an amnesty can also be thorny. Such an agreement would include Carles Puigdemont, the former Catalan leader who fled Spain to flee office. This year he did not receive a pardon because he remains a fugitive, Spain said.
But Mr Aragonés said only an amnesty agreement could turn the page on the conflict.
Although Catalan separatists have failed for years to gain significant international support for their cause, especially at the level of the European Union in Brussels, separatism has also dominated the political agenda elsewhere in Europe.
On Monday, Scotland’s leader Nicola Sturgeon called on the British government to allow Scotland to hold another independence referendum in late 2023, after the one in 2014 in which Scots rejected separation.
As in Scotland, in Catalonia there are not only divisions over whether to pursue independence, but also between the parties seeking independence. The issue also shows the division between residents of the Catalan capital and the tourist center of Barcelona and the smaller cities that have helped separatists maintain control of the regional parliament since 2015.
Aragonès represents the left-wing party Esquerra Republicana, which jumped together for Catalonia – the toughest separatist party of the former Catalan leader Puigdemont – in the last regional elections to become the largest separatist force in Catalonia.
These tensions resurfaced in preparation for Wednesday’s meeting. Aragonès rejected the Junts per Catalunya candidates for the Catalan delegation, because two of them were not part of the regional government, but were former prisoners who had been pardoned for sedition.
The dispute between Esquerra Republicana and Junts per Catalunya shows “that there is now a very important division between two parties that had managed to at least share the same vision and broad agenda until 2017,” said Lluís Orriols, professor of politics at Carlos University III in Madrid.
In contrast to Junts per Catalunya, he said, Esquerra Republicana has abandoned the idea that independence could be achieved unilaterally.
For Mr. Sánchez, on the other hand, the return to the negotiating table presents two short-term opportunities, said Orriols: “pacify what has been a hostile climate in Catalonia and, at least, prevent the conflict from returning to the streets.”
Orriols said he also increases Sánchez’s options to remain prime minister if the next elections in Spain produce a result that would force him and his socialist party to continue governing with the support of Catalonia’s main nationalist parties.
Since the last elections at the end of 2019, Sánchez led the first coalition government in Spain, alongside the smaller left-wing party Unidas Podemos, and with the support of the Catalan and Basque parties to push through legislation in Parliament. .
In terms of a real resolution of the Catalan dispute, however, political experts see little room to maneuver Mr. Sanchez, as he is the leader of a minority government in Madrid and at a time when right-wing opposition parties , in particular the ultranationalist Vox, are pushing for greater centralization in Spain, no less.
Wednesday’s meeting was the first of its kind since February 2020, when Mr Sánchez had tried to start negotiations to resolve the Catalan conflict, but his plan was suspended due to the outbreak of the coronavirus pandemic. hit Spain hard.
“Now there is an intense debate about whether decentralization has worked in Spain and it is also clear that Sanchez can not ignore the fact that any benefit given in Catalonia will suffer greatly in all other regions of Spain,” said Orriols .
In fact, the day before Mr. Sanchez was due to travel to Barcelona, Juanma Moreno, the regional leader of Andalusia, the largest region in Spain, asked Mr. Sanchez to open independent bilateral negotiations with Andalusia.
“It is unreasonable to negotiate privileges at the expense of the other territories of Spain,” Moreno argued.