Neither cold nor hot. This time the largest demonstration of yesterday's Diada, the one organized by the Catalan National Assembly (ANC), has not shaken the political landscape. Both ERC and Junts continue with their idea of entering into negotiations with the PSOE for the investiture of the president of the Government. “We must take advantage of the strength of the independence movement to negotiate,” the Government spokesperson, Patrícia Plaja, made it very clear in the press conference after today's Executive Council, a few after the mobilization. “We must deepen the negotiation strategy to achieve an agreed referendum,” she insisted while emphasizing that a DUI “is of no use.”
So in the face of the rejection and doubts that the negotiation generates in the ANC, the Catalan Executive, as well as Esquerra and Junts, continues to bet on the negotiated route. For the Government of Pere Aragonès, yesterday's demonstration represented a "very powerful image of unity that demonstrates the strength of the independence movement and the need for cohesion and coming out together" to achieve the goal of independence. “The people who took to the streets did so to demand independence” and this goes “through the self-determination referendum,” Plaja has argued.
But the Catalan Cabinet does not plan to leave dialogue aside to achieve it, since it considers that today, thanks to parliamentary arithmetic, "the conditions exist more than ever to advance the amnesty, self-determination and well-being of the citizenship".
In any case, the Government considers that coordination and cohesion would be necessary, which, although the ANC did not claim, Cultural Omnium or the Association of Municipalities for Independence (AMI) did. And a lot of ERC. For the Catalan Executive, Esquerra and Junts are "doomed to come to an understanding" in order to move forward in the negotiation.
The civic list that the Assembly could present in the next Catalan elections could go in the opposite direction, according to Aragonès. Plaja has completed the president's statements. She has expressed surprise at “the change in direction of the entity”, since “the essence of the ANC has never been to do politics from within the institutions”, but rather to promote the independence movement.
In any case, the Government spokesperson has insisted that the ANC is free to present a candidacy. In addition, she has pointed out that it could be an opportunity to see what support the path championed by the association led by Dolors Feliu has.
