Basques and Catalans say “nothing is closed”

“N“I absolutely rule out new elections”, everything is “very open” and “anything could happen”, said deputy Aitor Esteban, from the PNV, to journalists in Madrid.

Oriol Junqueras, the leader of the ERC, also told journalists in Madrid, where he met with the party’s deputies, that “nothing is closed” and the parties are “far from an agreement”.

Esteban and Junqueras’ statements come after this morning the leader of the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) and current prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said that Spain will return to having a left-wing government “in a short time”, leaving of the July 23 elections.

Sánchez negotiates the feasibility of a new Government led by the PSOE with nationalist and independence parties, who demand amnesty for those involved in Catalonia’s unilateral declaration of independence in 2017.

The Catalan parties represented in the Spanish parliament (the ERC and Together for Catalonia, owned by former regional president Carles Puigdemont) also want Sánchez to “commit to working to make the conditions effective” for a referendum on the region’s self-determination.

The two parties today took this common position in relation to negotiations for a referendum in a joint resolution proposal that they submitted to the autonomous parliament.

In the text, ERC and JxCat ask the regional parliament to speak out “in favor of the Catalan political forces with representation in the Spanish Courts not giving their support to an investiture of a future Spanish Government that does not commit to working to make effective the conditions” for there to be a referendum.

Pedro Sánchez, who until the July 23 elections rejected the possibility of amnesty, has not yet commented on the demands of the Catalan independence activists.

The Popular Party (PP, right) received the most votes in the July 23 elections and King Felipe VI nominated Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the leader of the popular ones, as a candidate for prime minister, but the investiture was rejected by deputies on Wednesday. fair, in a first vote that should be definitively confirmed on Friday.

Felipe VI should next nominate a new candidate for prime minister and Pedro Sánchez, the second most voted in the elections, has already said he is available and capable of gathering the necessary support in parliament to be returned to the position.

Sánchez says he already demonstrated this on August 17, when the socialists managed to win the presidency of parliament thanks to the support of left-wing parties and nationalist and independence forces in Catalonia, Galicia and the Basque Country.

Read Also: Sánchez predicts left-wing executive “within a short time”