Yolanda Díaz Slams Door On Catalonia Referendum, Urges Dialogue For Resolution

After beating around the bush for days, Yolanda Díaz has finally given a direct response this Thursday, and it has been a slap in the face to the Comuns and a closing of the folder on the referendum: “It is not on the table” – that is, neither a referendum or any type of consultation over Catalonia in relation to the independence of the country from Spain. “The only tool is dialogue and the dialogue table, in order to find a meeting point,” said Diaz, the current second deputy prime minister of the Spanish government and Sumar leader, who claimed that her own country model contemplates that, however, it is articulated, Catalonia “will be inside” Spain. “What we need is serenity and peace,” said Diaz.

The statements were made by Yolanda Díaz this Thursday in an interview on the Ana Rosa Quintana talk show on Telecinco. Asked insistently about Catalonia and the possibility of holding an independence referendum, the leader of Sumar finally closed the door with a good firm push. “The only recipe we have for Catalonia is dialogue,” said Diaz, accusing both the independence movement and Spanish unionism of having turned the country “into a noise box.” However, she also made a point of stressing the efforts made by the Pedro Sánchez government, pointing out that “things have changed a lot” in recent years and “everything is much better.”

Yolanda Díaz was asked about this issue after her party had left Comuns high and dry on the referendum issue. The Catalan party – integrated into the Sumar platform for the general elections of 23rd July – had affirmed that the Spanish deputy PM would include in her electoral program the holding of a self-determination referendum in Catalonia. The promise lasted only a matter of hours. Sumar rectified and the Comuns were forced into an exercise in linguistic engineering to bury the commitment to any sort of real consultation with Catalans.

Specifically, hours after having promised a referendum in Catalonia, the Comuns ended up referring to a “vote” on a “territorial pact” between Catalonia and Spain. Before that, Sumar’s campaign spokesman, Ernest Urtasun, had gradually buried the possibility of holding a consultation related to the independence of Catalonia because, he said, of the current situation of being “fortunately in times of dialogue, and there are bridges again” between Barcelona and Madrid. Thus, he remarked that the commitment of the party that he currently represents “is materialized in a dialogue table that has to work and provide solutions.”

Party sources, however, assure that Sumar has no intention of specifying what is beyond the dialogue table. That is to say, as much as the commitment of Yolanda Díaz’s formation is for Catalonia and Spain to sit down at a table to talk about how to resolve the political conflict between both parties, the hard core of the party admits that, for the moment, there will be no proposals about what to bring to this dialogue table. Thus, Sumar has not yet specified just what its proposal for Catalonia is.

Produced in association with El Nacional En

Edited by Judy J. Rotich and Newsdesk Manager