Rajoy in the frontpage of ‘De Morgen’, yesterday.
The Diplomat. 20/10/2017
The Spanish Government denied yesterday having complained to Belgium about the statements made by its Prime Minister, Charles Michel, on Catalonia, after the publication by two Belgium dailies of fragments of a supposed letter in which the director of the Office of Mariano Rajoy, the diplomat Jorge Moragas, would have complained about the comments of the Belgium ‘premier’ according to which he did not close the door to an international mediation for the Catalan crisis.
A spokesperson of the Office of Diplomatic Information (OID in its Spanish acronym) told The Diplomat that no formal complaint has been made –or verbal note or calling of the Belgium Ambassador to Madrid–, and no initiative has been taken by the department of Alfonso Dastis. Moncloa also denied to this daily that Moragas had written the Belgium representative for this reason.
The Spanish Government still considers the official position expressed by Michel last week in Parliament, when he pointed out that the Spanish Constitutional Court invalidated the referendum of 1 October and that Catalonia needs a peaceful and negotiated solution “in accordance with the rule of law and the national and international order”. Furthermore, the aforementioned spokesperson remembered that Rajoy and Michel have a good relationship and speak frequently, among other things, because they sit next to each other in the meetings of the European Council, as it happened yesterday.
The Flemish dailies ‘De Morgen’ and ‘Het laatste Nieuws’ echoed a letter of Moragas yesterday sent to the Belgium Ambassador affirming to be “astonished” facing what he considered to be “attacks of the Belgian Government” because of the Catalan matter, which could “seriously endanger bilateral relations” between both countries.
It also mentions a telegram of the Belgian Ambassador, Marc Andries M. Calcoen, to his Government warning that the Spanish Ministry of the Interior has informed him of the fact that Spain’s support to the candidacy of the Belgian Catherine De Bolle to lead Europol “cannot be maintained after Belgium’s reaction to the events in Barcelona”.
The Diplomatic tension between Madrid and Brussels has increased in the last days due to an interview of Michel last weekend with ‘Le Soir’, in which he affirmed that Catalonia is not living a “legal crisis, but a political one, and political crisis are solved through political dialogue”. The Belgian Prime Minister declared that, until now, what has been taking place is not dialogue, but a “war of nerves”, and that, only in the event of dialogue definitively failing, “an international or European mediation” could be considered.
Michel, of the liberal Mouvement Réformateur, presides over a Government of coalition of which the Flemish nationalists of the N-VA (the most voted party in the last election and ally of the PDeCAT of Carles Puigdemont) are part. He was also the first European leader to ask for the “violence” to be stopped on 1 October.