The Government, through the mouths of two of its ministers, has once again rejected any possibility of a self-determination referendum in Catalonia after the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, yesterday activated the process to reach a clarity agreement that allows setting the conditions for make a referendum proposal from Catalonia.
The initiative obviously has the rejection of 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 road map of the Catalan president. And the answer has not been long in coming.
Both the Minister of Finance and Public Function, María Jesús Montero, and the head of the Presidency, Relations with the Courts and Democratic Memory, Félix Bolaños, have already rejected it. The first has warned Aragonès and the PP that "with Sánchez as President of the Government there will be no self-determination referendum" in Catalonia, and the second has considered that the Catalan president's proposal is "very little useful and realistic" and supposes return to the "loop" that divided Catalan society and caused Catalonia to lose a decade.
"We have translated it into all possible languages and the Government knows it", stressed the minister, who thus responded to the Catalan president's announcement to call a round of debates with parties, entities and citizens to agree on an independence referendum after the municipal elections on May 28.
In statements to the media in Seville, Montero remarked that said referendum "is against the Constitution, it has no basis and, therefore, we have always said that any measure and agreement proposed by Catalonia must faithfully follow the constitutional elements" .
Along the same lines, Bolaños has pointed out that the future of Catalonia does not involve "any proposal that would go back to the past, that would divide Catalan society and stress the Catalans, and that would chronicle a conflict that was a lost decade for the Catalans". and has related the proposal of the president of the Generalitat in the proximity of the municipal elections. "We are still in the electoral campaign," he said, and "therefore I express all my respect for all the proposals of the political formations, no matter how unrealistic and useful they may seem to me."
"These types of proposals that lead to the worst past of the conflict, the division, the division and the tension of society, of course they are not the future of Catalonia," said the minister in statements to the media in Madrid. "The future of Catalonia goes through agreement, dialogue, employment opportunities, investment, companies that create opportunities for wealth and economic growth", he countered to highlight that the Government's commitment is "to move forward, turn the page, look the future and that Catalonia is a Catalonia with opportunities and that there is dialogue between different parties and that there are agreements."
