The first secretary of the PSC, Salvador Illa, plans to travel to Brussels next week to make his annual visit to the institutions of the European Union since he assumed leadership of the party. The trip is not without morbidity, since it arrives in the middle of the negotiations for the investiture of Pedro Sánchez with the pro-independence parties, but the party assures that this trip will not take place along these lines, so they rule out a possible meeting with the leader of Junts per Catalunya, Carles Puigdemont.
From the PSC they allege that Illa's visit to Brussels had been organized for months and, aware that the dates chosen could coincide with the negotiations already open, they warn against any possible meeting with the former president: "It will not be seen."
In any case, Illa's trip to Brussels is part of negotiations on the investiture in which the leader of the PSC has received recognition from Sánchez, who has positioned him as a figure with a voice regarding issues related to Catalonia. although outside the socialists' negotiating team, while he has been reviled by Junts. It has been Puigdemont himself and the secretary general of JxCat Jordi Turull who have been responsible for rejecting Illa as a “valid interlocutor” for these negotiations, something that reinforces the idea that there will not be a meeting with the former president in Brussels on the occasion of this visit.
Illa's trip aims to maintain the opposition leader's relations with the European institutions, which is why the visit program includes meetings with Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton and the Vice President of the European Parliament, Marc Angel. But also meetings with Vasco Cordeiro, president of the Committee of the Regions, and with the executive general secretary of the European Socialist Party (PES), Giacomo Filibeck.
Likewise, Illa also plans to meet with members of the Spanish delegation to the EU, such as the ambassador of the Permanent Representation of Spain to the EU Marcos Alonso, the president of the Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats group, Iratxe García, and the delegate of the Government of the Generalitat in the EU, Ignasi Centelles.
On his two-day visit to Brussels, Illa will also meet with the general director of communications of the European Parliament, the Catalan Jaume Duch, and attend the presentation of the book 'In Strange Times' by former first secretary of the PSC Raimon Obiols.
This trip is the third that Illa has made to the European institutions since she assumed the first secretariat of the PSC. On previous occasions, the leader of the opposition in Catalonia traveled to the European capital to meet with several commissioners; in 2021, with Nicolas Schmit (Work and Social Rights) and Josep Borrell, and in 2022, with Elisa Ferreira, (Cohesion and Reforms), Maroš Šefčovič (Interinstitutional Relations and Foresight) and Paolo Gentiloni (Economy).
