“Together he has told us the same thing as the PSOE,” the president of the Popular Party said this Wednesday, Alberto Núñez Feijóoduring an informative breakfast organized by Nueva Economía Fórum in Catalonia in which he also opted for “normalize” relations with Catalan nationalism. At another point in his speech he repeated that they had “had contacts” with Junts and, shortly after, he insisted again: “We had said that the only party we were not going to talk to was Bildu and we have complied.”
The PP refused to meet with Junts during the round of contacts for the investiture at the last minute, so, officially, there has been no meeting between both parties.
But, in Barcelona, Feijóo has recognized, in the midst of an offensive by the PP against the possible agreement between the PSOE and Junts, “indirect” contacts with those of Carles Puigdemont. “Not direct, nor personal,” he stressed, defending that the PP had never “denied” those conversations with the independence party. According to Feijóo, it was Junts who “wanted to talk” with the PP.
The truth is that he himself was slow to publicly acknowledge these contacts, under pressure from the hardest wing of his party, which rejects Junts as a valid interlocutor. Furthermore, Génova neither confirms nor denies that Esteban González Pons, deputy secretary of Institutional Affairs of the PP, met with Jordi Turull in the weeks prior to Feijóo’s failed investiture.
The president also insists popular in that “from the point of view of economic policies there is much more coincidence” between the PP and Junts than between Junts and the PSOE-Sumar coalition.
Furthermore, in front of the leader of the Catalan PP, Alejandro Fernandez, Feijóo has given a new nod to nationalism by recognizing that “without normalizing relations, based on disagreement, with Catalan nationalism” they will not be able to “improve the well-being of Catalans.” Every step in this direction that the president of the PP has taken turns the hardest wing of the party against him.
