Pedro Sánchez and Carles Puigdemont were separated by just a few steps this Wednesday in the hemicycle of the European Parliament in Strasbourg. There were cross messages from the stand, but no greetings. Since August 2017, the two leaders had not been so close. It is possible that in the coming weeks, however, the situation will be repeated in different circumstances and that there will be a formal meeting between the two. This was revealed yesterday by the general secretary of Junts per Catalunya, Jordi Turull, who assures that "almost a month ago" a meeting was agreed "as required" between the two leaders, although he did not set a date or place for the meeting .
Sánchez himself, however, yesterday avoided confirming this meeting with Puigdemont, although he did not reject it, and assured that it is not yet on the agenda. "What I have is a meeting with the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, as a result of the visit we will make to the inauguration of the Supercomputer in Barcelona", alleged the head of the Executive when he arrived at the meeting of European Council in Brussels, with reference to his meeting with Aragonès scheduled for Thursday, December 21.
"What we have agreed on is that there will be a meeting as necessary for the time it takes for the two presidents to be able to talk", Turull pointed out in any case in an interview with Cafè d'idees of TVE and Ràdio 4. "They will meet and they will hold a meeting to discuss the negotiation and deepen the resolution of the political conflict", he added.
In Moncloa they replied, anyway, that "for now there is nothing". And despite the permanent attempt not to underestimate his most difficult investiture ally, Sánchez's reference to his next meeting with Aragonès was significant. It should be borne in mind that, after Sánchez's investiture, the initial meeting of the negotiation space with international verification of JxCat and the PSOE took place in Geneva in the first place, and that the announcement of the Sánchez-Aragonès appointment it transpired just before the meeting in Switzerland.
With these elements, it is not lost on anyone that there is some competition between the two sovereignist formations and that the socialists, for their part, are trying to strike a balance between the two former members of the Government of the Generalitat.
In any case, there was no greeting between them on Wednesday despite the fact that Moncloa had ensured that if the president of the central government met the former Catalan president in the European Parliament there would be complete normalcy and cordiality.
Thus, Puigdemont avoided greeting the head of the Central Executive and Minister José Manuel Albares, whom a few weeks ago he had thanked for his efforts for the officialization of Catalan in Europe. Other Spanish MEPs, such as Jordi Solé, from Esquerra, despite being critical of Pedro Sánchez, on the other hand, did greet him.
But if Puigdemont had shaken hands with the president of the central government, parallels would easily have been drawn with what the president of ERC, Oriol Junqueras, did in the Congress of Deputies in the spring of 2019, in the constituent session, when he was in preventive detention and was awaiting the sentence and was able to go to the plenary session of the Lower House.
At Junts they considered that a similar photo or a greeting would have no value, no matter how much Sánchez pointed out in his speech that the threat to democracy in Spain is not the former president but the pacts of the PP with Vox, coincidentally in the moment the chamber was full because just after that there was a vote.
In the post-convergent formation, they believe that only a meeting in which Puigdemont is recognized as a political interlocutor and treated like any other leader of a formation is relevant. Especially for the statements of the President of the Central Government in recent years, especially in the electoral context, in which he spoke in favor of the pro-independence leader being arrested and extradited to Spain.
In this sense, Turull pointed out yesterday that "all this is not about photographs, it is about resolving a political conflict". A RAC1 said afterwards that, in fact, the meeting could have been held on Wednesday in Strasbourg, but "Sánchez had to go and it was not possible". The head of the Central Executive appeared on Wednesday in the Community Chamber to take stock of the rotating Spanish presidency of the Council of the EU and then traveled to Brussels on the occasion of the summit of the European Union-Western Balkans and the meeting of the European Council.
"We didn't want to make a portfolio of photos, what needs to be done is a proper meeting", justified the post-convergent leader, who added that it is advisable to have an interview "as long as it takes so that they can talk both presidents". "We have agreed to find the date and place for them to meet. The important thing is that they meet and talk, in a proper meeting, without photographs or party logos", he insisted.
What Turull made clear is that there will be no verification in this meeting between Sánchez and Puigdemont. "The two of them will be there, it's about normalizing a relationship and negotiations between the two presidents that have not been possible since 2017, as a result of the repression", he concluded.
When the de facto leader of Junts was president of the Generalitat, he met Sánchez three times, twice in private and once in public. The last one was in August 2017, the day before the tribute to the victims of the attacks in Barcelona and Cambrils, at a discreet lunch.
