The president of the government of the Spanish region of Catalonia, Pere Aragonès, defended that there is “a historic opportunity” at the moment to hold a referendum on the independence of Catalonia in agreement with the Spanish executive.

“The Spanish State should take advantage of this historic opportunity to provide a democratic solution that allows citizens to decide the future, as the United Kingdom has done with Scotland or Canada with Quebec”, defended Aragonès in an article entitled “Independence of Catalonia: a transparent agreement must establish the bases and the conditions for the organization of a referendum”, published on the portal of the French newspaper Le Monde this Thursday, coinciding with the holding, in Barcelona , of the annual summit between Spain and France.

Pere Aragonès defended that the Spanish government “must open this new phase to build a solution on the political level, a democratic advance within the European framework”, and added that “not doing so or delaying it would be a serious mistake”.

The referendum must be “recognized by all parties concerned and have the support of the international community, as advanced democracies do”, he added.

For the president of the Catalan government, it is necessary “to build solutions to political conflicts based on democracy”.

According to Aragonês, it is now possible to agree on a legal referendum (as opposed to the illegal one in 2017) thanks to the dialogue between regional and national authorities.

“The negotiations are beginning to bear fruit regarding the end of the repression, with important measures such as the abolition of the anachronistic crime of sedition” at the end of last year of the Spanish Penal Code, under which “they have were sentenced to a cumulative sentence of hundreds of years in prison several members of the government and parliament of Catalonia, as well as representatives of civil society for having made possible the referendum of October 2017,” wrote Aragonès.

The President of the Regional Government of Catalonia stressed that “there is today a solid, broad and transversal majority in Catalan society that wants to decide democratically, peacefully and freely on the political future” of the region.

Pere Aragonès, of the Esquerda República de Catalunya (ERC), attended this Thursday the official reception of the French delegation in Barcelona, ​​alongside the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, but left the ceremony shortly after greeting and speaking for a few minutes with the President of France, Emmanuel Macron, and before playing the national anthems of both countries and the regional government, the ERC and all pro-independence parties and associations condemned the political use of Barcelona which they consider that Sánchez made when choosing the city to celebrate the summit, with the aim of wanting to show Spaniards and the world that independence and the attempt at self-determination and that 2017 is over.

This is why thousands of people took to the streets of Barcelona this Thursday, summoned by dozens of parties and associations, to show that Catalan independence “is alive”.

The current Spanish government, led by socialist Pedro Sánchez, has been committed, since taking office in 2019, to “dejudicializing” the conflict between the state and Catalonia, “normalizing” relations with the region and to dialogue with the regional authorities.

As early as 2019, Sánchez’s government pardoned pro-independence supporters who were in jail after the 2017 self-determination attempt.

At the end of last year, the Penal Code was amended to eliminate the crime of sedition, which had led to the arrest of nine independence supporters and of which other Catalans who had not yet concluded their business or who had fled justice, such as the former president of the regional executive, Carles Puigdemont.