Part of 2. Questions to the Minister for International Relations and Welsh Language – in the Senedd at 3:04 pm on 30 January 2019.
I understand that the Welsh Government intends to extend its network of embassies, as it were, within the Spanish state. Can I ask you whether it’s an intention to look specifically at Catalonia, and the Basque Country, of course, where there is a close relationship between Wales and those nations already? I raised these issues specifically because in a recent visit by a delegation from the Catalan Government to Brussels, Meritxell Serret, who works for the Catalan Government, had said that they—the Catalan Government—were interested in opening an embassy here in Wales, particularly if we were to do likewise there.
May I ask also—? Because Meritxell herself is a refugee who is unable to return to Catalonia at the moment—and the Llywydd herself visited the former Speaker of the Catalonian Parliament, Carme Forcadell, who is in prison there—would it be possible for the Minister on behalf of the Welsh Government to raise this issue with the Spanish ambassador? I know that that is a reserved issue, and so on, but this is a very unusual situation in the history of recent European democracy, and it of course is in the tradition of Wales, in thinking of what happened during the Spanish civil war, that we express our full co-operation with the people of Catalonia at the moment.