Spain opens new diplomatic conflict, now with Slovenia

After the recent diplomatic crisis with Flanders, now the clash is with Slovenia. Catalonia is the reason behind this new crisis again. The Slovenian government has summoned the Spanish ambassador to Ljubljana to appear before the Foreign Minister today, according to Delo newspaper. They will remind him that the Slovenian independence process was a peaceful one and violence only began when Serbia sent the Yugoslavian army to attack them.

Catalonia’s president Quim Torra recently visited Slovenia and met with the country’s president, Borut Pahor, and the Parliament’s speaker. Following the statements made by President Torra after his return to Catalonia praising the Slovenian way to independence, high representatives of the Spanish government and from several political parties, as well as many media, attacked him by identifying Slovenia’s independence with violence.

In an interview with VilaWeb, Slovenia’s first Prime Minister after independence, Lojze Peterle, made it very clear that their intention was to reach independence through an absolutely peaceful manner, by exercising the right to self-determination, and that the only violence that took place was when Belgrad ordered the army to attack Slovenia without any legal basis to do so. As a result, around 70 people died.