Puigdemont criticizes Rajoy for responding to negotiation offer with legal challenges

Barcelona"For every Catalan proposal or offer of dialogue and negotiation, there is a Spanish legal challenge". This was the response of Carles Puigdemont, President of the Generalitat, to the news that the Spanish government chose on Friday to file a complaint before the Constitutional Court (TC) against the referendum resolutions approved by the Catalan parliament in its general political debate.

Before visiting the Saló Nàutic, a boating trade show in Barcelona, Puigdemont remarked that the administration's decision “comes as no surprise", but said that he believes it is a mistake: "Just a few days ago I went to Madrid calling for dialogue, making proposals, hoping for reciprocity, more so after the reinforcement we received from the vote of confidence and the general political debate. And the response of the Spanish government is a string of legal challenges", he said.

According to the President of the Generalitat, the Spanish government's attitude militates against the idea of reaching agreement, even though "it will have no practical effect on stopping the will of the Catalan people", but rather the opposite.

A gesture by Rajoy to the PSOE

In this vein, Puigdemont raised the possibility that the Spanish government might have promoted this challenge to demonstrate their firmness against the independence movement and to appear more friendly with the PSOE, who it hopes will abstain in the investiture of Mariano Rajoy as president of Spain.

"I don't know if it is a message to sweeten the PSOE's support for Rajoy's investiture, because, in the middle of the 3% Gürtel corruption scandal, I suppose that it would be more difficult for the socialists to follow through on their commitment to make Rajoy president. Maybe the PP thinks that it will provide a more palatable excuse, given what Spain’s socialists are having to swallow", he noted.