KING Felipe VI of Spain has rejected a possible meeting with Catalan president Quim Torra at tomorrow’s opening of the Mediterranean Games in Tarragona.
The monarch returned from a visit to the US to find a letter from Torra – their first official communication – and his two predecessors, the exiled Carles Puigdemont and Artur Mas, calling for dialogue to “heal the wounds” caused by the repression of independence supporters.
However, the response from the Zarzuela Palace, the royal household, was immediate and negative.
Its head, Jaime Alfonsin, said Felipe would not discuss political matters and, under the Spanish constitution: “The acts of the king shall be endorsed by the president of the government and, where appropriate, by the competent ministers.”
Therefore, the “political meeting” would fall to Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sànchez.
Torra, Puigdemont and Mas said the visit to Tarragona was an “historic opportunity” to repair the “violence, the repression and the persecution” following October’s independence referendum.
They wrote: “In your speech last October 3, you opened a great wound for many citizens who would have never expected a head of state to give his approval to violent repression of peaceful citizens by police. Shouldn’t you be above individual interests and try to be a voice for conciliation and in defence of dialogue?”
In a personal PS, Torra wrote: “We need to talk. I have to be able to explain everything we have written with president Mas and Puigdemont in the previous letter.
“It is for me ... a moral duty. For that reason, I am convinced that you will want to find a moment in your visit to Catalonia this Friday to do it and to see us.”
Torra has previously been critical of Felipe’s backing for former prime minister Mariano Rajoy’s moves to stop the referendum, saying: “What is happening in this country, with the exiles, with political rights, we have not heard a single word of the king.”
Felipe accused pro-independence politicians of fracturing Catalan society, but made no mention of the violence used by National Police officers to stop the poll.
Torra said he regretted that the head of state had acted as if nothing had happened and that after his October 3 intervention, “we understood that he was no longer the King of all Catalans”. He has called for the king to retract his speech. It is not known if the president will attend tomorrow’s opening ceremony, but a suggestion that he might boycott it has come under fire from the Spanish government’s most senior representative in Catalonia.
Teresa Cunillera said the event would be Torra’s “first occasion to show institutional respect” since his election as head of government a month ago.
Now that Rajoy has left politics, Felipe appears to have taken over his mantle as the arch-enemy of the pro-independence lobby.
A recent poll by Catalonia’s Centre for Opinion Studies (CEO) found that 77.9% of people graded his performance at a score of 4 or lower out of 10 and most (60.3%) gave him a score of zero.
Torra is travelling to Berlin today for his second meeting with Puigdemont since the exiled leader named him as his successor.
The Spanish judiciary, meanwhile, has rejected a petition from a Belgian court ordering Pablo Llarena, the judge in charge of the case against the pro-indy leaders, to appear in court in September to respond to a lawsuit from Puigdemont and others.
Madrid Judge Antonio Viejo commented: “Llarena is acting within the framework of Spain’s sovereignty.”
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