Sunday, 06/23/2019 – 12:24
Joan Canadell. / ALBERT BERTRAN
The president of the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce, Joan Canadell, has urged the Govern to define what is their proposal to “undo” the current political situation if, after a few weeks, the government that comes out of the last general elections does not take a step forward and doesn’t agree to sit down and talk about Catalonia. In an interview with EFE, the independence entrepreneur considers that it is urgent to resolve the current “political instability” to generate a scenario more favorable to the activity of Catalan companies, and that, in his opinion, should go through Catalonia having a “State of its own”.
“The ball is on the roof of the State”. We still do not know the pacts that will be achieved and may be a few weeks go by, but there will come a time when the Government will have to sit down to talk with the Govern and find a way out of political instability”, Canadell has pointed out.
In his opinion, the “negotiation” between the two executives must go “for a solution with which the majority of Catalan society agrees, at least 50%.” After stating that he sees the Catalan executive “willing to dialogue” while the government “until now, doesn’t”, the employer has affirmed that the Quim Torra team also has a “responsibility” and this is just “defining what it wants to do” if the Spanish government does not sit down to talk.
Pressure on governments
Canadell urges the Govern to “make a proposal that refloats all this” and force the other to move. “If the (Spanish government) does not come to the negotiating table, the Government of the Generalitat will have to look for the way, we cannot be indefinitely like this, without sitting because the other does not want to do it”. Canadell, who has just taken office as president of the Chamber after a vote that his candidacy won with an absolute majority, has defended the role of the institution as a political agent”. We are here to tell politicians to get upset and to pressure governments to create a climate that favors companies”, he said.
Enter politics
The businessman of Eines de Pais, the candidacy for the Chamber promoted by the ANC, has ensured that also other former presidents of the Chamber as Miquel Valls, or as the current president of the Chambers of Spain, José Luis Bonet, also entered into politics. “We all do politics, we cannot accept that it is politics when we say that defending the company requires having a state of its own, and that it is not when everything is said to continue as it stands by now”, he argued.
In line with this conviction, Canadell has said that the Chamber, as an institution, plans to “go to have talks with Madrid”, just to put forward its defense of an independent Catalonia and does not rule out even going through the Council of Chambers of Spain.
Negotiate for a State of your own
The new president of the Chamber has once again appealed to the big Catalan companies to “intercede” in the political debate, to act as lobby and “to pressure the Government to understand that it must sit down to negotiate” and “respect” the right to self-determination.
Canadell, who has already met with most of the large companies that occupy the 14 silver chairs of the Chamber, has assured that he has brought before them that his priority objective is “to develop the potential of the Catalan company to the maximum” and that, for this, “we must take another step and have a state of our own”. Thus, he affirmed that “we do not want an independent State because we are pro-independence; it is only that in a reasoned manner we have come to the conclusion that it is good for us to have a State”.
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