Neither one thing nor the other has occurred and today, October 1, what we all should have prevented has become a reality. “Time will give the perspective of the collective failure that we are living”, has declared CCOO’s General Secretary, Unai Sordo. On his side, UGT’s General Secretary, Pepe Álvarez, has reminded that “this is a political conflict and it needs political solutions”.

The intervention of the Government and of the State legal system has not remained under proportionate standards and has shown its most repressive face, contributing with its excessive force to increase the tension. Police solution is not the solution.

Social mobilization in Catalonia has been unquestionable and it expresses, with no doubt, the existence of a political conflict which cannot be handled unilaterally by the Catalan Government, or exclusively from administrative and judicial points of view. Even less when, at the end, these latter ones result in purely policing actions which fuel the conflict.

We convene to put the situation back in scenarios of dialogue among political parties and governments; negotiation, discussion and democracy are the way out.

When the worst predictions have been met, we insist on calling those who have the utmost responsibilities in both sides of the conflict to desist from adopting new measures that could heighten the confrontation.

We make a new appeal to replace the strategy of tension and conflict by a new one of dialogue and negotiation.

Read Joint UGT and CCOO Press Statement EN, FR.