The meeting between the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, and the President of the Canary Islands, Fernando Clavijo (Canary Coalition), was much better than even La Moncloa expected. Sources from the Executive and the Presidency of the Canary Islands agree that the meeting took place in a very good tone and that both approached positions after weeks of tension in which Clavijo charged against the Government and approached Alberto Núñez Feijóo, with whom he signed an agreement to pressure La Moncloa. But the breakdown of the negotiations for the distribution throughout Spain of the more than 5,000 immigrant minors who are accumulating in the Canary Islands, which the PP decided last Saturday unilaterally – no one notified Clavijo, who found out through the press, like the others – The political situation has changed and this Thursday’s meeting has finished turning it around.
Throughout the week, the Canarian president has remained silent waiting for his government partner to find a solution with the national leadership of the PP. But the parliamentary debate on Wednesday, in which Feijóo practically did not talk about immigration despite the fact that the thematic plenary session was his request, and the meeting in which Sánchez offered to immediately resolve the arrival of 50 million euros so that the Canary Islands face the migration crisis and opened up to delivering the almost 160 million that Clavijo is asking for as compensation for the situation accumulated in 2022 and 2023, they have completely turned the situation around.
Now Sánchez and Clavijo have joined forces, at least temporarily, in a common objective: to pressure the PP to return to the negotiating table and to seek an agreement for the distribution of minors. Those around Clavijo point out that no one in the Canary Islands, not even the local PP, understands the unilateral break that Feijóo decided on Saturday and they see as “an excuse that does not hold up” the idea that they did it because the Spanish Government does not ask for help from Europe. Clavijo committed in the meeting with Sánchez – and later said it publicly – to call Feijóo to try to convince him to return to the table. The Government hopes that he will do so immediately and trusts that Clavijo will achieve it. From there the negotiation would return.
The President of the Executive, in return, showed his willingness to solve the problem and offered immediate financial help for the Canary Islands Executive and a meeting between Clavijo and María Jesús Montero, Minister of Finance, to discuss larger amounts. This negotiation also opens the door for the Canarian Coalition to approach the Government and support the Budgets if the negotiation with Junts is finally unblocked and the Accounts are a reality.
What Clavijo is not going to do – he made it very clear in his public appearance and his entourage concludes it in private – is break the Government of the Canary Islands, which he leads in coalition with the PP. The leader of CC saves at all times the actions of the Canarian PP and points his reproaches at Génova Street, a way to save the stability of the regional Executive.
“I have not been able to speak [con Feijóo]but we will have that conversation. The vice president of the Government of the Canary Islands [del PP] He is just as committed as I am. The PP of the Canary Islands has acted with loyalty. Now we have to talk about the need to recover understanding,” said the Canary Islands president. “We do not understand the breakdown of PP negotiations. We don’t share it. Problems are solved by talking. We do not understand or justify that you get up from a negotiating table and we have conveyed this to the national PP,” he explained. The Minister of Territorial Policy and former president of the Canary Islands, Ángel Víctor Torres, was also clear in La Moncloa: “The will of the Government of Spain and the Canary Islands is clear: that the PP return to the dialogue table. “We have not gotten up nor are we going to do so.”
In parallel, Genoa remains anchored in its position of maximum and they want to remove from the drawer the pact signed between Feijóo and Clavijo, on September 10, in which the demands of the popular were included to accept a legislative change that imposes the distribution of minors arrived especially in the Canary Islands, Ceuta and Melilla, and that affects the reform of article 35 of the immigration law, which did not prosper in Congress in July with the vote against the PP. In the agreement sealed between the popular leader and the Canarian president, specific requirements were expressed to accept the distribution of minors between communities, but also generic demands that transcend this issue, such as the Spanish deployment in the countries of origin. The PP leadership states in public that these conditions go hand in hand with the reform of article 35, and that any pact must include all these requirements. But sources from the Canary Islands presidency assure that the negotiations are about and focused on how to arrange the mandatory distribution of migrant minors, downplaying the other demands, which would be left for later. A position that agrees with that of the Canarian PP, with whom it co-governs the archipelago.
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