CATALAN MPs in the Spanish parliament could withdraw their support for the government of Socialist prime minister Pedro Sanchez if he carries on the policies of Mariano Rajoy – the man they helped him dethrone – according to a senior Catalan politician.

The remarks came in a Catalonia Radio interview yesterday from government spokesperson, Else Artadi, who spoke of her disappointment at the outcome of the first Spain-Catalonia bilateral commission meeting in seven years.

“It was very long and disappointing, both politically and sectorally,” she said. “There is a positive part that we could talk about everything frankly, and this is obviously a change and it is positive, but it was disappointing that we could not go beyond what is the central political conflict.”

READ MORE: First meeting in seven years between Spain and Catalonia ends in disappointment

While they trusted “dialogue and negotiation”, Artadi warned the Spanish government: “If the behaviour of the [Socialists] PSOE is the same as that of the PP [People’s Party], there is nothing that justifies supporting Pedro Sanchez if the behaviour is the same as that of Mariano Rajoy.”

The meeting lasted for almost four hours on Wednesday evening, but ended in acrimony when Meritxell Batet, the head of Spain’s delegation, rejected the idea of an agreed independence referendum, saying Catalonia’s right to self-determination “does not exist”.

Catalan delegation leader and foreign affairs minister, Ernest Maragall, responded: “We’ll insist and we’ll win, even though they keep telling us that this is not a matter for discussion.”

Artadi said the Catalan government proposed to bring together experts to consider the question of self- determination but was told the “bilateral” was not the appropriate setting to discuss it.

“They said that this could not emerge from a bilateral one,” she said. “We told them that if they created another space, then, for us this is the least [that could happen]. There is the feeling that they are not very sure of what they are saying, because if you are sure, what problem do you have with talking? What are they afraid of?”

She described the Spanish delegation’s response as “bureaucratic”, and criticised the PSOE for shifting Catalan proposals to “technical meetings” in September: “We did a lot of work we had been prepared to discuss at the meeting and they just took note and set them up in September. We were left to close the dates and exchange documents at the end of August but no, they took the work [as] done.”

She said she had not lost hope of the “possibility” of an agreed referendum, but said if it cannot be agreed, the Catalan government “does not rule out anything, neither disobedience nor unilaterality [a unilateral declaration of independence]”.

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“We understand that this path is the one with the broadest consensus ... survey after survey, most of the Catalans say we need a broad consensus ... 80% of people want it to be voted. OK, forward.”

Meanwhile, an opinion poll yesterday showed that Sanchez’s PSOE would coast to a win in a general election with 29.9% of the vote.

His no-confidence motion – backed by Catalan pro-independence MPs, Basque and other minority parties – led to Rajoy’s downfall, giving the Socialists a majority of just 84 seats in the 350-member Madrid legislature. The poll of 2500 people by the Sociological Research Centre, is the first the first since Sanchez came to power.