The dialogue table will meet monthly and the agreements will be “in the framework of legal certainty”

The Government and the Generalitat have agreed, at the first meeting of the dialogue table on Catalonia, that this forum meets once a month, alternating meetings between Madrid and Barcelona. Both parties have agreed to a joint communiqué in which they have also explained that "any agreement adopted within this table will be formulated within the framework of legal certainty." President Pedro Sánchez and the leader of the Government Quim Torra have presided over the constitutive meeting that the PSOE and ERC agreed in their agreement for the investiture of the former.

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Torra has assured in his appearance, after three hours of conversations, that this meeting "has been the zero table" and that he hopes that in the next he will "deepen" in the solutions. "It has been an open debate and with freedom of approach, which has served to highlight the distance of both parties on the nature and ways of solving the political conflict in Catalonia," said Torra. The president of the Generalitat has assured that he has not received any response from the central executive regarding his proposal on the right to self-determination and amnesty to the imprisoned independence leaders or the existence of a mediator. "We have expressed the need to have this instrument, to clarify," he explained.

The president of the Generalitat has also explained that Sánchez has wanted to put on the table some sectoral issues "that are very important" but Torra has asked to separate the areas. In fact, he has asked not to mix the dialogue table with other political issues such as the elections or the vote on the deficit path that will be voted in Congress tomorrow Thursday. The Generalitat, he said, will soon convene the State Generalitat bilateral commission, set out in the Statute.

The meeting was also attended by members of the respective delegations, with the sole exception of the second vice president of the Government, Pablo Iglesias, who suffers from tonsillitis. Together with Sánchez and Iglesias, the first vice president, Carmen Calvo, and the finance ministers form the Spanish delegation; Transport, José Luis Abalos; Health, Salvador Illa; Territorial Policy, Carolina Darias; and Universities, Manuel Castells.

On the Catalan side, Torra is accompanied by Vice President Pere Aragonés, Councilors Jordi Puigneró and Alfred Bosch, Deputies Elsa Artadi, Marta Vilalta and Josep Maria Jové - the latter investigated by justice for his role in preparing the referendum of the October 1 as 'number two' of Vice President Oriol Junqueras - and former chief of staff of Torra and former President Carles Puigdemont, Josep Rius.