The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, will not be in Congress this Tuesday, when the use of Catalan, Basque and Galician in the Chamber comes into force, but will be 6,000 kilometers from Madrid, in New York, where he will be participating in the debates of the United Nations General Assemblywhich began on Sunday.
However, the debate on the Spanish political situation has crossed the Atlantic before Sánchez did. Two weeks ago, the newspaper Washington Post published an editorial of unusual harshness against the President of the Government’s plans to negotiate with Junts per Catalunya (JxC). The headline of the article, signed by the newspaper’s Editorial Board, left no doubt about its content: “Spain is taken hostage by a faction of separatist extremists.” The text compared the Catalan separatists with Vox and Donald Trump, and stated that “in Spain, the source” of identity politics is not “race or religion”, but is “regional, especially in the prosperous region of Catalonia”.
Finally, the newspaper cited the former Minister of Foreign Affairs with Pedro Sánchez, First, Gonzalez-Laya, to defend the thesis that trying to negotiate with the secessionists is just a distraction from the real problems that Spain has. Contacted by THE WORLDboth the head of the Opinion section of the newspaper – a position that in the US press has enormous power, since the Opinion area is completely separated from the News area -, David Shipleyas the main author of the text, Leo Hockstaderdid not want to add more to the article, claiming that “this one is self-explanatory.”
The harsh editorial of Post -a newspaper that as recently as 2019 published an opinion article signed by Oriol Junqueras– has meant a surprising change in the general position of the US towards Sánchez, who from the beginning of his mandate has taken special care to take care of relations with the United States, both with the Government of Joe Biden and with the media of that country, which was evident in the meeting with the American president at the White House last May, just at the start of the campaign for the municipal and regional elections.
The American political class, and even more so public opinion, are totally unaware of the Spanish political vicissitudes, as long as the country maintains its political and economic stability and continues to be a faithful ally of the I’LL TAKE. The Government’s strategy for the next two months of negotiation with JxC is that an agreement with that party will reinforce this stability, since it will eliminate the potential source of tension that the resumption of the secessionist process in Catalonia would entail. A secessionist process that no one in Washington believes will happen or that it would be good for the interests of Europe or the United States – in fact, that must be one of the few things in which ObamaTrump and Biden agree – but it still raises some concern about its potential to create problems in the future.