MADRID (Sputnik) — Urkullu, who is also the head of the Basque government, said that the condition his party put forward for the talks was for the discussion on the Basque problem to be open.
"While there is no debate on the Basque issue, it is very difficult to talk about the support [to the PP]," Urkullu said.
He added that the specific requirements for the talks on coalition participation would be a release of prisoners from ETA, an armed Basque organization that campaigns for the independence of the Basque Country, as well as the transfer of the management of the prisons located in Basque to the Basque Country authorities.
On June 26, the PP won the parliamentary elections in Spain by receiving 33 percent of the votes. It will have 137 seats in the 350-seat Lower House of Parliament. Following the election result announcement, PP leader Rajoy said that his party would arrange negotiations with all the other parties, with the sole purpose of protecting what he called Spain’s territorial integrity.
In 2008, the Spain's Supreme Court prevented Basques from holding a consultative referendum on independence.
On June 5, the Basque Country organized regional poll, in which tens of thousands backed secession. Around 37,000 voted in the poll that was conducted in 34 municipalities. The region’s total population is over 2 million. Slightly over 95 percent of those sampled said "yes" to whether they wanted to be citizens of a sovereign independent Basque Country.
Madrid has called the vote unconstitutional.
