The Spanish ambassador to Sweden, Javier Jiménez Ugarte, has admitted trying to boycott the trip by the Catalan minister of foreign affairs, Raül Romeva, which he made to the Nordic country from Sunday to Tuesday. Romeva met diplomats and politicians in the Swedish government, as well as the president of the European Parliament’s Committee on Foreign Affairs, Carl Schlyter, from the Green Party. He also took part in a roundtable debate at the Institute of International Affairs. Jiménez Ugarte tried to prevent the event taking place, as he admitted in the Swedish newspaper, Dagens Nyheter.
As he was not successful, he sent a cultural attache to take notes on the content of the event. In fact, a few days ago the embassy also put pressure on the Svenska Dagbladet newspaper not to publish an article by Romeva on the Catalan process with the title ‘Democracy is at risk in Spain’. The same daily published evidence of the pressure from the Spanish government.
The president of the Generalitat, Carles Puigdemont, alluded to the issue in the Catalan parliament, saying he found it “condemnable and unacceptable” that the state government should use “money from all Spaniards” to prevent the “legitimate task” of the Generalitat’s foreign relations. He also made reference to the two emissaries that the Mariano Rajoy administration has sent to travel the world providing their version of the independence process.
