The Diplomat in Spain

Josep Borrell and Ernest Maragall shake hands at the beginning of the meeting / Image: YouTube

The Diplomat. 24/07/2018

Catalan Minister for External Action, Ernest Maragall, yesterday pledged to respect the Spanish law that obliges the autonomous communities to inform Madrid in advance of any decision to open delegations abroad, as well as about trips abroad that the president Catalan, Quim Torra, or their advisers do from now on.

The Minister of Foreign Affairs, Josep Borrell, received yesterday Maragall for the first time, in the framework of the «normalization» of relations between the Central Government and the Catalan Generalitat, according to sources of the Ministry, and as a continuation of the meetings held by the Government’s President, Pedro Sánchez, with Quim Torra, and the one between the Vice President and the Generalitat’s ‘number two’.

Maragall informed Borrell of the Govern’s desire to reopen the ‘embassies’ that were closed during the application of Article 155 of the Constitution. At that point, Borrell reminded him of the procedure envisaged in article 12 of the Foreign Action Act and the ‘conseller’ promised to respect it in the future.

Weeks before this meeting, Catalonia’s Government announced the reopening of the delegations in the United Kingdom, Germany, the United States, Italy, Switzerland and France and communicated it to the Foreign Ministry on the eve of its publication in the Official Gazette of the Generalitat de Catalunya (DOGC).

This maneuver left the Foreign Affairs and Treasury Ministries no time to report on their suitability that, in any case, is not binding. Borrell indicated to Maragall that, for the moment, the Foreign Ministry reserves any decision on the matter regarding the aforementioned delegations reopened.

Both also discussed the state of the institutions in which the State and the Generalitat participate in their respective consortiums: the European Institute of the Mediterranean (IEMED), which has not had a president for a year; the CIDOB think tank; and, above all, Casa Asia, with serious funding problems due to the delays of the Generalitat when it comes to pay its share of the institution’s budget.