Ciutadans believes that an interview with the Catalan president Carles Puigdemont may have cost the taxpayer money. The party headed by Inés Arrimadas queried the Catalan government in Parlament, asking whether the Generalitat had offered money to international media outlets for an interview with the president, according to what ‘El Món’ has been able to learn. The parliamentary query was put forward by MP Susana Beltrán -former vice president of Societat Civil Catalana- after five large European dailies -the UK’s ‘Financial Times’, France’s ‘Le Monde’, the German ‘Süddeutsche Zeitung’, Italy’s ‘Corriere della Sera’a and Portugal’s ‘Diário de Notícias’- all simultaneously ran an interview with Puigdemont last month.
The parliamentary question, which requires a written response, actually puts forward four queries. The first is whether “it was an initiative of the Generalitat government to contact these media outlets.” In the case of an affirmative answer, a follow-on question asks: “Were other international media outlets also contacted? If so, which ones.” The third gets to the point: “Did the Generalitat government pay so that Carles Puigdemont would be interviewed by the aforementioned media outlets? In the case of an affirmative response, the query also asks how much was paid to each of the European newspapers that printed the interview with the president of the Generalitat?”
The fourth question put forward by Albert Rivera’s party refers to the Generalitat’s foreign activities: “How is the Generalitat de Catalunya complying with the suspension by the Tribunal Constitucional of article 37 of the Catalan Law 16/2014 on action taken abroad and relations with the European Union, and which prevents the Catalan government from maintaining permanent and ongoing contact with international media outlets from all over the world, in relation to the interviews done by the Generalitat in different foreign newspapers?”
