The President of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, failed to clarify Monday whether his administration had officially declared independence from Spain and instead called for talks.

In a letter to the Spanish Prime Mariano Rajoy, Puigdemont asked for two months of dialogue over the status of the region in northwest Spain, which held a disputed independence referendum on October 1. Rajoy had set a deadline of 10 a.m. local time Monday for Puigdemont to say definitively whether an ambiguous speech he delivered to the Catalan Parliament last week in the wake of the referendum amounted to a declaration of independence.