The former president of Uruguay José Pepe Mujica has advocated that "Spain can be more federal and shelter the different peoples that live in it" after meeting with the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, in Montevideo this Wednesday. This was expressed in statements to journalists after participating in the meeting with the former Vice President of Uruguay, Lucía Topolansky, and the Minister for Foreign Action, Meritxell Serret, as part of the official trip of Aragonès and Serret to Latin America.
Mujica has claimed to have "an idea of the adventures of the Catalan people, their dreams, their setbacks" and has described the meeting as fraternal, as if the participants -in his words- had known each other for a long time.
During his visit to Montevideo as part of his tour of Latin America, Aragonès expressed this Wednesday his desire to "strengthen ties" between Catalonia and Uruguay. During a press conference in the Uruguayan Parliament, Aragonès assured that "there is a significant number of Catalans and descendants of Catalans in Uruguay" and that historically the presence of Catalans has been "very important", as has that of Uruguayan citizens in Catalonia.
In turn, he said that both territories share a "maximum ambition" to offer their citizens "shared prosperity, justice and the guarantee of the best rights and economic growth of the country at the service of improving the quality of life of their citizens".
The leader of Esquerra Republicana also highlighted the progress of trade negotiations between Mercosur and the European Union as a "very important" issue, while he pointed out that the completion of the agreement they have been negotiating for more than 20 years will be as beneficial for Catalonia as for Uruguay. "We are summoned to continue exchanging points of view because, in the end, we all want the best for our respective peoples", highlighted the president of the Generalitat, who was in Colombia from last Saturday to Tuesday and who, after Uruguay, will travel to Argentina and Chile.
During the day, Aragonès met with the mayor of the department (province) of Canelones (south), Yamandú Orsi, at the Legislative Palace, where a meeting with the vice president of Uruguay, Beatriz Argimón, was also scheduled, which was finally postponed.
Before leaving for Argentina, the Catalan president visited the Mujica farm, with whom he spoke for just over an hour accompanied by the Minister of Foreign Affairs and the European Union, Meritxell Serret, and with the presence of the former vice president of Uruguay and wife of Mujica , Lucia Topolansky.
