The Diplomat
The former president of the Generalitat, Carles Puigdemont, has made, through his Twitter account, a call for mobilisation against the Spanish-French summit, which has been called for the 19th, in Barcelona.
The summit is expected to be attended by a large number of ministers from Spain and France, in delegations led by the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, and the President of the French Republic, Emmanuel Macron.
In his message on Twitter, Puigdemont, who fled Spain to avoid prosecution for the illegal referendum of 1 October 2017, criticises those who “have worked to demobilise and break unity”, which he describes as a “great tool to defend Catalonia against a state that discriminates against us and harms us because we are Catalan”.
Puigdemont does not cite ‘enemies’ in the tweet, but makes clear reference to the political rift between ERC and JxCat, who came to contest together within the Junts pel Sí candidacy between 2015 and 7 November 2017.
“On the 19th, let us unite and mobilise to defend the country from deluded undertakers,” said the former president of the Generalitat.
The 19th will be the first Spanish-French summit to be held in Barcelona since these meetings were institutionalised in 1987, and the second in Catalonia after the one held in Girona in 2006. This year, Spain will be in charge of organising the event, after it was held in Montauban, near Toulouse, in 2021. The previous edition on Spanish soil took place in Malaga in 2017 between François Hollande and Mariano Rajoy.
The Barcelona summit will be the first bilateral summit with normality fully restored after the coronavirus pandemic, since at the last one, in Montauban in 2021, only Sánchez and Macron were physically present, while some thirty ministers from the two countries participated telematically.
At the meeting on the 19th, Spain and France are expected to sign the first Treaty of Friendship and Cooperation between the two countries.
In addition to bilateral issues, Sánchez and Macron will address various matters on the European agenda, and the head of government will have the opportunity to present the priorities of the EU presidency that Spain will hold in the second half of 2023.
