Sanchez and Torra speak for first time since Catalan leaders jailed

Although Catalan sources described the call as “cordial”, Torra, who has been trying to speak to his Spanish counterpart for two months, complained about his “lack of institutional courtesy” for not talking to him earlier.

He was also critical of the “hard” stance taken by the head of the Spanish executive on the issue of independence during the campaign for last month’s general election.

Sanchez, who leads the Socialist Party (PSOE), may have triumphed in that poll, but still needs backing from pro-indy MPs in the Spanish Congress to form an administration.

He has already negotiated a coalition arrangement with the left-wing, anti-austerity party Podemos and is wooing MPs from the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC).

Torra is a close ally of exiled Catalan president Carles Puigdemont and, although he is not a member of any political grouping, he is fiercely pro-independence and could prove key to Sanchez’s bid to stay in the Moncloa – the Spanish equivalent of 10 Downing Street.

Catalan government sources said Sanchez recognised the “political nature of the [Catalan] conflict, as it did in the first meeting in Moncloa” in July last year, and acknowledged that it was “necessary to advance”.

They said Torra had called for Sanchez to meet and had “shown himself ready to do so as soon as possible”, although the Spanish government saw it differently in a briefing note: “Torra has requested a meeting with President Sánchez,” adding that Sanchez would have no difficulty, “when there is a government and the legislature is started”.

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“Pedro Sánchez’s goal is to govern from progressive values and with the desire to build great consensus with the political forces and the maximum responsibility of the autonomous communities,” they said.

Sanchez later tweeted: “Start the legislature [with] dialogue and reduce territorial tension. With that objective I will convene an annual Conference of presidents of Autonomous Communities in the Senate and bilateral meetings with everyone. That is why a government is urgent. This is what I am communicating today to the regional presidents.”

However, this appeared to be news to Torra, who said: “In the conversation with President Sanchez, he had not informed me of any of this ... Maybe it’s because he no longer considers me an autonomous president. All in order.”

Three judges in the Spanish Constitutional Court, meanwhile, have said that judge Pablo Llarena violated the right to political representation of Oriol Junqueras, one of the jailed independence leaders.

He was a candidate in the December 2017 Catalan election, but was not allowed out of “preventative detention” ahead of his trial over the October indyref that year.

The judges, Fernando Valdés, Juan Antonio Xiol and María Luisa Balaguer, said Llarena violated his right to political representation, and should have considered an alternative measure, such as bail, to avoid the risk of him reoffending, but preserving his rights.

They said: “The criminal judicial body has an obligation to weigh the effect that the provisional imprisonment of this particular political representative will have on the normal development of the parliamentary democracy system and the sufficiency of other alternative measures to deprivation of liberty.”

The judges added: “It should have been considered necessary to study in sufficient detail, as required by the [European Court of Human Rights] ECHR jurisprudence, if alternative measures could be taken which would alleviate the restriction on the right of political representation, respecting the principle of proportionality with respect to the need for safeguarding the ends of the criminal proceedings.”