JOSEP M. CALVET, 12 APRIL 2023
The Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, addresses the media on Wednesday in Seville Julio Muñoz / EFE
CLARITY AGREEMENT
María Jesús Montero and Félix Bolaños scorn the proposal of Pere Aragonès, who yesterday activated the process to present a Catalan proposal for a consultation.
The Government, through the mouths of two of its ministers, has once again rejected any possibility of a referendum on self-determination in Catalonia after the President of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, yesterday activated the process to reach a clarity agreement to establish the conditions for a referendum proposal from Catalonia.
The initiative is obviously rejected by the PP which, through its spokesperson in Congress, Cuca Gamarra, has demanded that the head of the Executive, Pedro Sánchez, answer whether he will accept the Catalan leader’s roadmap. And the response has not been long in coming.
Both the Minister of Finance and Public Function, María Jesús Montero, and the Minister of the Presidency, Relations with Parliament and Democratic Memory, Félix Bolaños, have already rejected it. The former has warned Aragonès and the PP that “with Sánchez as President of the Government there will be no referendum on self-determination” in Catalonia, and the latter has considered that the Catalan President’s proposal is “very unhelpful and unrealistic” and means returning to the “loop” that fractured Catalan society and caused Catalonia to lose a decade.
“We have translated it into all possible languages and the Catalan Government knows it”, the minister stressed, responding to the Catalan President’s announcement that he would convene a round of debates with parties, organisations and citizens to agree on a referendum on independence after the municipal elections on 28 May.
Speaking to the media in Seville, Montero stressed that such a referendum “is against the Constitution, it has no basis whatsoever and, therefore, we have always said that any measure and agreement that Catalonia puts forward must faithfully follow the constitutional elements”.
Along the same lines, Bolaños pointed out that the future of Catalonia does not lie in “any proposal that is a return to the past, that divides Catalan society and makes Catalans tense, and that chronicles a conflict that was a lost decade for the Catalans”, and he related the proposal of the President of the Generalitat to the proximity of the municipal elections. “We are still in an election campaign”, he said, and “I therefore express my full respect for all the proposals of the political parties, however unrealistic and useful they may seem to me”.
“This type of proposal, which leads to the worst past of conflict, division, breakup and tension in society, is certainly not the future of Catalonia,” the minister told the media in Madrid. “The future of Catalonia lies in agreement, dialogue, job opportunities, investment, companies that create opportunities for wealth and economic growth,” he said, stressing that the Government’s commitment is to “move forward, turn the page, look to the future and for Catalonia to be a Catalonia with opportunities, with dialogue between different people and agreements.
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