Talks on Catalonia conflict begin in Switzerland: media report
The negotiators from both sides arrived in Geneva on Friday, as was shown on television. But there was initially no official announcement from either side.
Keystone / Rodrigo Jimenez
According to media reports, representatives of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) and the Catalan separatist party Junts began talks in Switzerland on Saturday under strict confidentiality about a settlement to the long-running conflict. This was reported by the Spanish public television channel RTVE and the newspaper "El País", among others.
This content was published on
3 minutes
Keystone-SDA
Español
es
Comienzan en Suiza las conversaciones sobre el conflicto de Cataluña: según los medios de comunicación
The negotiators from both sides arrived in Geneva on Friday, as was shown on television. It was not known whether Catalan regional president Carles Puigdemont himself would attend. There was initially no official announcement from either side. Not even the exact location of the meeting was known.
Spain’s acting Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez had agreed to the negotiations to secure the votes of Puigdemont’s Junts party in the parliament in Madrid for his re-election as prime minister just over a fortnight ago. Puigdemont wants Catalonia to secede from Spain, while Sánchez wants to prevent this and defuse the conflict through dialogue and concessions.
More
More
Democracy
Anger sparks Swiss-Catalan appetite for direct democracy
This content was published on
The first response from a Swiss Abroad to SWI swissinfo.ch’s appeal for personal direct democracy stories comes from Catalonia.
Junts insisted that the talks with the PSOE be accompanied by a neutral organisation that would verify possible outcomes and monitor their implementation. Officially, it has so far been kept secret who has taken on this role. RTVE reported that it was the renowned Swiss Henri Dunant Centre for Humanitarian Dialogue (HD). This private foundation based in Geneva, which claims to have been discreetly mediating conflicts worldwide for decades, had already overseen the dissolution of the Basque terrorist organisation ETA in Spain and verified it in 2018.
According to media reports, the meeting took place outside of Spain so that Puigdemont, who lives in exile in Belgium, could potentially attend in person. In his home country, he would be arrested immediately for leading an independence referendum in the region in 2017, as the then president of Catalonia.
Sánchez has also promised Junts and the Catalan separatist party Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC) an amnesty for his re-election. However, this still has to be approved by parliament, which could take months.
Spain’s conservative opposition is up in arms against the concessions to the Catalans. Opposition leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo from the conservative People’s Party (PP) has repeatedly warned of a threat to Spain’s unity, democracy and the separation of powers.
This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. You can find them here.
If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.
External Content
Your subscription could not be saved. Please try again.
Almost finished… We need to confirm your email address. To complete the subscription process, please click the link in the email we just sent you.
Boats sail to Solothurn to celebrate 700 years of Le Landeron
This content was published on
The challenge of crossing Lake Biel from Le Landeron to Solothurn without a motor was taken up by 16 amateur crews on Saturday. The competition is part of Le Landeron's 700th anniversary celebrations.
Swiss cantonal ministers keep low profile on social media
This content was published on
A small base of followers and neutral posts: these are the conclusions that emerge from a study published by UNIL researchers into the use of social networks by councillors of state.
Swiss rents forecast to rise up to 5% annually, housing chief warns
This content was published on
Rents on the Swiss market are set to rise by between 3% and 5% a year over the next few years, warned Martin Tschirren, Director of the Federal Housing Office (FHO), on Sunday. "Demand for housing remains higher than supply".
This content was published on
The Council of the Swiss Abroad, meeting today in Bern, passed a resolution in favour of the new Electronic Identity Act (Id-e), which will be put to the vote on 28 September.
One person consumes 4.8 megawatt hours of electricity
This content was published on
On average, the Swiss consume 4.8 megawatt hours of electricity per year. According to Velobiz.de, this is roughly equivalent to the amount generated by all 176 cyclists in the Tour de France during the entire race.
This content was published on
Ten days after the vote, the Catalan president has called for dialogue. But both sides are avoiding a truly democratic independence process.
This content was published on
The Swiss foreign ministry is ready to set up a platform for dialogue between the Spanish Government and the Catalan authorities, according to the Swiss public television RTS. The ministry confirmed to RTS that the Swiss authorities are “in contact with both parties”. In principle, it said, it examines all arbitration requests and reacts positively…
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.