The first bilateral meeting between the PSOE and Junts after the signing of the investiture agreement will take place in the next few days in the Swiss city of Geneva. As confirmed by socialist sources, its Secretary of Organization, Santos Cerdán, who was the person who was negotiating in Brussels and who was photographed with Carles Puigdemont before the signing of the agreement, will attend on behalf of the party, although they have not detailed the identity. the rest of the members their delegation.
Despite the initial rejection that was about to derail the investiture pact, Pedro Sánchez now sees the figure of the verifier as an aid to the relationship and dialogue with the independence party. This is how he expressed it in an informal conversation with the journalists who accompanied him this week on his visit to Israel, Palestine and Egypt. In the opinion of the head of the Executive, this figure, which limits dialogue between parties, is useful between formations that present distant positions and between which, as both sectors recognize, there is distrust.
From Ferraz’s leadership they specify that this “international verification mechanism” would not have to be a specific person, but rather that this function could be carried out by an organization that would verify the progress that could be produced in these meetings, which are planned to be held on a monthly basis. . At the moment the only agreement that has been closed is the amnesty for those involved in the 1-O referendum, while the rest of the issues that were included in the investiture pact are a kind of agenda of the issues that will be addressed in these meetings.
In the PSOE they now defend the usefulness of this verification figure because they start from “totally antagonistic” positions, since Junts demands a self-determination referendum, while Sánchez’s team has offered to “develop” the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia in 2006. Likewise, they highlight a very important change with respect to what existed until now, since at least they are going to “sit down and talk.”
The choice of the city of Geneva to hold the meeting would allow the attendance of Puigdemont, who has been on the run from Spanish justice since 2017. As in the negotiation of the investiture, the socialists resort to the maxim of “discretion in conversations” and “publicity in the agreements”, if they are achieved.