a Glove of silk in european issues and direct messages to the chin in several matters of internal policy. Josep Borrell (La Pobla de Segur, Lleida, spain, 72 years old) has a foot and a half in Brussels, where it will be High Representative of the EU, and remains a minister of Foreign combative in the Government in roles of Pedro Sanchez. A head of the diplomacy peculiar, that has invested a good part of his time as a minister in combating the challenge of independence in the outside. In September 2017, Borrell said that in Catalonia there was “a coup of a regime neodictatorial”. In a room attached to his office in the Palace of Santa Cruz, in the Madrid of the Austrias, as the minister explains that it was a coup, “postmodern”, but it puts the emphasis on the skirmishes that occurred on the streets during the last few weeks.
Question. office, one of the five large EU, it has great projection on paper, but in the past has shown many limitations. What are your plans?
Response. Clear that it has limitations. But it also involves being the vice president of the Commission, with powers to coordinate foreign policies, trade, development, neighbourhood policy, enlargement… If we widen the focus, it relates to immigration and climate change, the two great geo-politics of these times. If, in addition, you must try to build a foreign policy and common security, the significance is greater.
Q. migration has proven to be very divisive in the EU. What will be your role?
“had Not seen such violence since the industrial reconversion”
A. Europe has suffered two crises, geopolitical recent: the men in green in Ukraine and vests oranges in the Greek islands. In these two crisis, Europe lost its virginity geopolitics. The Ukraine remains open, in terms of immigration, Europe lived through an acute crisis of refugees in 2015 and 2016 after the war syria, which screened on us a million and a half people. Once he stopped that flow, we have returned to levels pre-crisis. But in the consciousness of europeans has been that we have a standing immigration crisis when what we had was a peak of refugees.
Q. That perception has driven the populism.
A. Yes, because someone feeds it. The british believed that the boats would not reach the English Channel and that had a lot of influence on the psychology of Brexit.
Q. The agreements on Gibraltar in the Brexit, would open the door for Spain to claim the co-sovereignty in the medium or long term?
A. Neither the open nor the close. From the beginning we said that we had to solve the so-called issues irritants (environment, smuggling, workers, taxation…) and we managed it with four memos and a fiscal treaty that have a life of its own. And we have achieved a great triumph of Spanish diplomacy: the recognition by the EU that Gibraltar is a territory of the colonial and that in the future, any agreement between the EU and the United Kingdom with regard to Gibraltar, you will need the Spanish agreement. We have the right of veto. We are in a much better position now.
Q. is The visit of the Kings to Cuba is not untimely the day after the elections?
A. When it was fixed it was not known that it was going to be elections. The relevance of the trip will always be discussed. I think it’s funny that you say that a trip of State to celebrate the 500 anniversary of The Havana presents problems. The list of leaders that have passed through Cuba is huge. That the King of Spain to go on date so specified does not seem to me bizarre.
Q. In Venezuela the political situation is stagnant. Does the EU have to resign to seek humanitarian aid?
“Without a Government capable of exercising, the crisis may be aggravated”
A. No. If you created the contact group was due to the insistence of spain. There has not been enough and I will have to do because it can end up becoming one of the greatest humanitarian crises of our time. You have to ask for the root causes, they also have to see, whether we like it or not, with the effects have economic sanctions that the U.S. imposed on Venezuela. Why not use the financial resources venezuelans in the exterior, which have been blocked by the united States? If the cost of changing the regime of Maduro is to cause a famine in Venezuela… I’ve been criticized because I have the opposite of the EU adopted sanctions that affect the people of Venezuela. I’m going to keep resisting. We have sanctioned leaders, venezuelan, but unlike U.S., Europe has not implemented economic sanctions, global, that will only impoverish more.
Q. Is raised US to punish Spain for giving alleged support to the regime of Maduro, as it has been published?
A. Is outright false. Our contacts with the us authorities refute this. In any case, even if there was such a situation, there would be no basis for sanctions of that type.
Q. How the EU is facing the phenomenon of Donald Trump?
A. try to avoid this clash between Europe and the united States; what unites us is much more than what separates us. Europe is a small rocky promontory of the eurasian continent, China and Russia are remodeling. Or we can unite more and keep the transatlantic relationship or our values and interests are not going to survive.
Q. What role will play Spain in that frame of mind? What risks do you see in the next legislature?
A. Spain needs governance. Because if not there is a Government able to exercise its functions, the crisis may be aggravated.
Q. By what has not been achieved until now?
A. Occurs in many countries. Our democracy is young, certainly, but from the Constitution we have shown a resilience remarkable. We had to repeat elections, two times, there has been a motion of censure, and nothing has happened.
Q. Well, have passed some things: among them the events of Catalonia.
A. But the institutions have worked. We have had to apply the 155, a thing that no one would have imagined. And we have done a censure motion, and has not done anything. But the crisis has changed the society, is less cohesive, with wounds that have not heal, with young people with fewer prospects for the future. All of that has traducido in the system of political representation. If you add a technological transformation that is only in its beginning, it generates a change in the behaviors of political citizens.
Q. You have been a Foreign minister’s peculiar, with a very prominent role in the greatest constitutional crisis in 40 years, Catalonia. Before being a minister used to speak of a coup d’état.
A. coup postmodern: today it is possible to alter the constitutional order in a way post-modern. What is a coup? We have the image of tanks in the street, but it occurs when you pass a law to another in a manner not provided for in the law. As well defined by the writers political.
Q. At what stage are we at?
A. In a very delicate moment because there has been violence on the streets ever seen in Spain since the industrial reconversion. Even there, you arrived at those levels. It is something unheard of. And the bad thing is that it is supportive of and applaud from the Government of Catalonia. The leaders of the social organizations of the pro-independence say that so they have visibility in Europe. Go if you have it. But it plays clearly against it. That violence is not justified at all.
Q. His ministry has fought the internationalization of the procés. But what to do to reconcile the two halves of Catalonia?
A. First, recognize that there are. Starts to there are people that defends that other half and that makes me so happy. That cry was heard for the first time in 2017: one of my policy merits was to give it a voice. You have to emerge the feeling of that procés not leading anywhere. A third part of my work as Foreign minister has been to contrast the image that is intended to give a Spain’s repressive, fascist, who denied rights and freedoms, and explain how it is our country, which is not that Spain’s black.
Q. Carme Forcadell said that in Catalonia, has lacked empathy with non-independence. What Madrid lacked empathy?
A. What has been missing is to act in your time. It was left to do hoping that I was going to pass without more. In this ministry the instruction was to keep silence. And that was a fatal mistake.
Q. There are those who think, also in Brussels, which were a mistake loads of police of the 1-O.
A. To view the result, it probably would have been better to let the police autonomous Catalan did his work, to the extent that it would have been left, as it does now. But that was in the script for independence, lead to a situation in which there were to resort to force to prevent something that is very easy to sell: we just wanted to vote.
