Artur Mas: "The independence project today does not have the conditions to move forward"

"Whoever says that independence will be resolved in the next four years is either not seeing the point or is deceiving"

BARCELONA, 24 Dic. (EUROPA PRESS) -

The former president of the Generalitat Artur Mas has considered that "the independence project today does not have the conditions to move forward", although he added that this does not mean that it will not have them again and has defended the negotiation with the Government.

"With the mess that the independence project has now, we cannot punish the country for the next few years by hiding the inabilities of the independence project and showing what it is not by gesticulating excessively in front of the gallery," he said in an interview in 'La Vanguardia' collected by Europa Press this Sunday.

Mas explained that "if the independence movement was prepared to take the definitive step", he would not have recommended investing the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez.

In that sense, he highlighted that "a great opportunity has opened up in Spanish politics, one of those that happens very occasionally or almost never and has to be taken advantage of from a Catalan and Catalan perspective."

He has placed the meeting between Sánchez and the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, within institutional normality, and has warned: "Whoever says that independence will be resolved in the next four years is either not seeing the point or is deceiving."

"Now we have a golden opportunity in Spanish politics and if that requires meeting with Sánchez as many times as necessary, it has to be done. And absolutely nothing happens. We have to get all the juice possible out of the situation," he insisted.

He has said that we are currently living in the 'post-procés' and, asked if he considers what has been known as the 'procés' closed, he answered yes, adding that it is better that way and calling for lessons to be learned after not having "objectives achieved."

"As we have known it, the process is already over. That does not mean that the sovereign aspiration has ended or that the objective of independence does not have to be set on the horizon," added Mas.

He has warned that everything will change if the pro-independence forces do not gain a majority in the Parliament after the next elections because, according to him, with a hypothetical Government chaired by the leader of the PSC, Salvador Illa, the opportunity that he considers that the independence movement has in Madrid " leaks gas".

Faced with this "great risk", he has urged the recovery of the independence movement's roadmap, a style of doing things, he said, and a way of acting that restores the confidence of those who do not vote or have stopped voting for the independence movement, something that for him represents the most important challenge.

"If we get to the elections with Junts and ERC throwing things at each other and fighting like monkeys, they will be accused of not having achieved independence and also that they will have lost the pro-independence majority. That has to inspire the actions of the parties from now," he said.