The Diplomat in Spain

The Diplomat

Pedro Sánchez said yesterday in the Congress both Brexit and Catalan pro-independence movement walk “by parallel routes and with similar rhetoric”, based on “invented grievances and manipulation”.

“In both cases it is intended to force the population to make decisions with a binary decision, it is forced to choose between being European and being British, to be Spanish or to be Catalan, when we have lived with those identities and with many others throughout. dozens, dozens of years“, said the President of the Government during his appearance before the Plenary of the Congress to report on the situation in Catalonia, the agreements of the last European Council dedicated to Brexit and the next European Council of 13 and December 14th.

“In both cases, a third party is blamed while ignoring their own responsibilities in cuts in education, in health that erode social cohesion and trust in institutions. In both cases, the one who disagrees is demonized, and the population is forced to fight in confronting camps”, he continued. All this, he warned, “always with the same pattern: the primacy of visceral emotions over reason”.

“We must remember that the Brexit starts on a grotesque campaign of lies and unprecedented misinformation”, he complained. “The independence movement has followed the same pattern of deceit and exaltation of emotions that their British travel companions”, he continued.

According to the President of the Government, “the Catalan independence movement undermines the European project by challenging the collective project of Spain”. “The strength of the Union is based on its integration, never on its segregation, on the will to share sovereignty in a globalized world, to recover power of decision for the benefit of the social majority, above all, of those who need politics. to be able to transform their lives”, he continued.

During his speech, Pedro Sánchez recalled when, in 1999, he worked for the United Nations in Bosnia and Herzegovina. “I witnessed the consequences of the civil war in the former Yugoslavia” and “I have returned to Bosnia on more than one occasion and, unfortunately, coexistence continues to be a pending issue”, he explained. “For this reason, claiming, as claimed by the Catalan independence movement, the Kosovo road or the Slovenian road denotes an ignorance of history, an unacceptable manipulation and the despair of those who no longer have any argument but lies to sustain their political positions”, denounced

Agreement on Gibraltar

Regarding the UK Withdrawal Agreement and the attached Political Declaration, Pedro Sánchez reiterated that the Government’s position “has always been the same: to offer tranquility and security to the population of the Campo de Gibraltar”, a position that “in no way affects the position that Spain has always defended in relation to the sovereignty of Gibraltar”. “The demand for full sovereignty over Gibraltar is perfectly compatible with the search for agreements of all kinds – economic, social, financial, fiscal or military in the framework of the Atlantic Alliance – to prevent the population from suffering the consequences of a no agreement”, he added.

According to the President of the Executive, Spain “has more than achieved the objectives that were proposed at the beginning of the negotiation”, since the Political Declaration of the European Council and the Commission regarding the territorial scope of future negotiations “requires agreement of Spain for the negotiation of any agreement of the European Union that applies to Gibraltar and excludes Gibraltar from the general negotiation between the EU and the United Kingdom”.

“European leaders”, including “the president of the European Parliament, the president of the European Commission and the president of the European Council”, have assured that the agreement is “binding”, even though “some want to feed with false news and exaggerations a debate that should be beyond the partisan interests”, he continued. “We hope that the opposition, in this matter, recognizes the success of the Government of Spain, even for once”, he warned.

During his turn of reply, the president of the PP, Pablo Casado, affirmed that the negotiation of the Government on Gibraltar “was a failure” and that both the British prime minister, Theresa May, and the main minister of Gibraltar, Fabián Picardo, “were ovations to say that Spain had not achieved anything”. In the same line, the president of Ciudadanos, Albert Rivera, lamented that “the letters are binding for the EU but not for the United Kingdom and I do not trust those who want to leave the Union”. “We have missed an opportunity to have the United Kingdom at a crossroads and a preponderant position on Gibraltar”, he added.