Highlights

The Catalan President, Carles Puigdemont, has summoned the members of the National Alliance for the Right to Self-Determination to meet on the 23^rd of December to start organising the referendum on independence. The summit, in compliance with the resolutions adopted at the general policy debate in October, will be chaired by Puigdemont and the President of the Parliament, Carme Forcadell. As sources close to the presidency have told the Catalan News Agency, the meeting will be held in the Parliament just after it has given green light to the 2017 budget. The aim of the meeting is to find political and social consensus around the organisation of the referendum to be held next September 2017. According to the Spanish Government spokesman, Iñigo Méndez de Vigo, the meeting is a “symptom of unilateralism”, resulting from requests from “the radicals of the CUP”.

The Association of Municipalities for Independence (AMI) wants to internationalise the pro-independence process in Catalonia from the local sphere. It has therefore launched a campaign to explain the pro-independence process, the roadmap to achieve independence and the Catalan Government’s will to hold a referendum in September 2017. In an interview with the Catalan public radio station, Catalunya Ràdio, the president of the organisation, Neus Lloveras, detailed that the intention of the initiative is to report on the pro-independence process, avoiding the filters of Spanish diplomacy and amplifying the message of the Catalan local sphere worldwide. AMI started to send letters to the mayors of all the state capitals and the 100 largest cities in the world on Monday. In total, the organisation predicts that 548 mayors from five continents will receive a letter explaining the Catalan reality “without interference from Spain”.

The Public Diplomacy Council of Catalonia (Diplocat) has been invited by the Electoral Commission of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to observe the early parliamentary elections that will take place on Sunday. A team of eleven observers trained in international electoral observation, who are currently following the final days of the election campaign and the preparations for the vote in the regions of Skopje, the Northeast, the Southwest, and Pegalonia. On Sunday they will observe the actual vote itself, the vote count, the compiling of the results, and the final announcement of the results. This is not the first time that Catalonia’s Public Diplomacy Council sends an observation mission to another country; recently, in October, they travelled to Morocco and so far they have also been present at elections in Uruguay, Costa Rica and Armenia.

The pro-independence referendum in Catalonia, expected to take place in September next year, may be accelerated depending on Spain’s attitude towards Catalonia. “If the Spanish Government accelerates decisions against the Catalan institutions, we should find a solution somehow”, Catalan Vice President and Minister for Economy and Tax Office, Oriol Junqueras stated this Friday. In an interview with Catalunya Ràdio, Junqueras also admitted to “not having a clue” whether Spain’s executive will offer a political solution for Catalonia soon and lamented that the supposed willingness to dialogue expressed by the Spanish Government started by proceeding with the prosecution against Parliament’s President, Carme Forcadell, for allowing the Chamber to debate on independence.

A group of scientists from the Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB) at the Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology have identified a population of oral tumour cells which may feast on fats to spread throughout the body — a process called metastasis. According to the study, published this Wednesday in the prestigious scientific magazine ‘Nature’, some of these cells expressed high levels of a molecule called CD36, which helps cells to take up lipids from their environment. The research shows that applying antibodies that block CD36 and eliminate its interaction with fatty acids resulted in a reduced number of metastatic focus and also reduced their size by around 80% to 90%. “If we cut the lipids supply to those cells which generate metastasis they are practically unable to spread”, the leader of the IRB ‘Cancer and Stem cells’ team, Salvador Aznar Benitah, explained. 

15 British MPs from different political parties presented an ‘Early Day Motion’ this Thursday to the House of Commons to express their “concern” about the prosecution of the Parliament’s President, Carme Forcadell. The document, promoted by Scottish National Party (SNP) MP, George Kerevan, warns that Forcadell “could be subject to debarment from public office” for “allowing a parliamentary debate” and believes that “regardless of the constitutional legalities involved” the situation is not only “regrettable” but also “sets a dangerous precedent”. Therefore, the signers urge the Spanish Government “to reconsider the prosecution” and find “a resolution to its disagreement with the Catalan Parliament through mutual dialogue”. In a press statement, Kerevan also describes the controversy as “a clear case of free speech” and feels that the trial “would only create ill-feeling in Catalonia”.

The Scottish National Party (SNP) MP, George Kerevan, invited the delegate of the Catalan Government to the UK and Ireland, Sergi Marcén, to explain Catalonia’s current situation to a group of British MPs. The meeting, which took place on Tuesday at Westminster, aimed at giving information to the MPs regarding the independence debate going on in Catalonia and, mainly, the Catalan Government’s wish to hold a referendum on independence. “We did not tell them about [Catalonia’s] independence, but about the referendum process”, Marcén explained in an interview with the Catalan News Agency. According to Marcén, “the democratic tradition” of the UK is “so powerful” that the “most surprising” thing for British MPs is “the lack of a negotiating table” with Spain to “reach an agreement and hold a referendum”.

Unemployment in Catalonia increased by 4,573 people in November and reached 462,969 individuals registered on the lists of the Catalan Public Employment Service (SOC). According to the data released by the Spanish Employment Ministry and Social Security, unemployment saw a 1% rise in monthly terms. This increase in jobseekers is the highest registered in November since 2013. The Catalan Secretary General of Employment, Social Affairs and Families, Josep Ginesta, warned that the reduction of unemployment in Catalonia is “slowing down” due to the dependence on seasonal economic sectors. In this vein, he proposed the reconversion and reindustrialisation of Catalonia to create “more and better” jobs.  In annual terms, registered unemployment has decreased, with 58,681 less jobseekers, an 11.25% drop. 

The European Parliament passed this Thursday a text, promoted by the Greek MEP Kostas Chrysogonos, which explicitly reports the Castor case and the thousand earthquakes suffered by the locals in Valencia and Catalonia’s Ebro Delta. This business project, consisting of an offshore facility that had to store 1.3 billion cubic metres of reserve gas for Spain, failed after causing over 1,000 small earthquakes. The European Parliament called this Thursday to “include the victims of collateral damage linked to prospecting, surveys and the operation of offshore facilities” in the potential beneficiaries of future compensations. “It is very important that all those affected by offshore oil and gas operations, which are proved to be in detriment of the environment and of the activities of other persons be compensated”, Chrysogonos said to the Catalan News Agency, after slamming the “scandal” which is the Castor case.

The legal services of the State Attorney are already “studying” the impugnation of the Catalan Government’s draft budget for 2017, which includes an allocation of €5.8 million to guarantee that the independence referendum scheduled for September will be carried out. The announcement was made on Wednesday by the delegate of the Spanish Government in Catalonia, Enric Millo, who stated that this part of the accounts “could be challenged” in the near future by the Spanish state. Furthermore, Millo believes that the allocation could be annulled by the Spanish Constitutional Court, which may consider it to derive from the Declaration of the 9-N symbolic vote, which has already been declared unconstitutional. The delegate of the Spanish Government in Catalonia believes that this budget “doesn’t contribute” to the relationship between the Catalan Government and the Spanish one. However, he reiterated his “outstretched hand for dialogue” and confirmed he will be meeting with the Catalan President, Carles Puigdemont, this Friday. 

There has been a recent turn in British investment in Catalonia. While Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) from the United Kingdom in the region was on a downward trend between 2013 and last June, the situation has reversed and Catalonia currently accounts for 4,4% of British FDI in Spain. Indeed, Catalonia is the third territory of Spain in terms of volume of British FDI. Ahead of Catalonia, stand only Madrid and the Basque Country, which received, respectively, €3,258 and €828 million from the UK between 2013 and last June. In the same period, Catalonia received a gross flow of €546 million, according to the Barometer on the Climate and Perspectives for British Investment in Spain and Catalonia, a report that analyses the evolution of direct investment from British companies in Spain.

The Spanish Government is willing to “dialogue” with the Catalan Government, but has closed the door to a self-determination referendum, because it “liquidates the essence of the [Spanish] nation”, said the Spanish Vice President, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, this Wednesday. Requested by the Catalan Socialist MP Meritxell Batet and the spokesman of the Spanish alternative left party Podemos, Iñigo Errejón, to permit reform of the Constitution in order to respond to Catalonia’s independence movement, the politician stated that to do so “requires consensus on the point of departure and arrival”. Furthermore, she stressed the necessity to achieve “an agreement on the diagnosis of the problems and the solutions”, a goal that currently is not possible given the disagreement seen in the Spanish Parliament, she added.

The Catalan President, Carles Puigdemont, is suspicious regarding Spain’s executive willingness to dialogue. During this Wednesday’s session of control in the Parliament, Puigdemont stated that Catalonia deserves a bilateral negotiation with the Government in Madrid and that he considers anything other than this a way to “dilute and disguise what is really going on” in Catalonia and therefore “confuse public opinion”. Pro-independence radical left CUP MP, Mireia Boya, went a bit further and urged Puigdemont not to go along with Spain’s “siren calls” in relation to its supposed openness to dialogue. On the other hand, Xavier García Albiol, the leader of the Catalan branch of Spain’s governing party PP, called for Puigdemont not to be like “a statue” before the “signals” sent by the Spanish Government. 

The Government’s draft budget for 2017 presented to the Parliament's President, Carme Forcadell, this Tuesday includes an allocation of €5.8 million to guarantee that the pro-independence referendum scheduled for September will be carried out. In particular, the bill establishes €5 million for electoral processes and €0.8 million for participation. Moreover, the budget also includes hidden allocations which would allow the referendum to take place despite the inevitable suspension of the Spanish Constitutional Court (TC). In 2014, the budget also allocated €6 million oriented toward holding the 9-N symbolic vote in independence. At that time, the allocation was included within the Public Administrations department. However, this time the allocation would be an explicit competence of the Catalan Ministry for Economy and Tax Office. 

Norwegian Airlines will double its workforce at Barcelona Airport, from the current 354 people to 755 in August 2017. The announcement was made this Monday by the Vice President of Human Resources of the company, Jan Dahm-Simonsen, during the press conference on the expansion of the airline offices at the installation in Prat de Llobregat. The 755 jobs Norwegian Airlines will have at the company headquarters in Southern Europe, in Barcelona, will include administrative, flight and ground assistance personnel. The expansion of staff responds partially to the rise in operations of the airline at Barcelona Airport, which will connect the city with Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York and Miami from next summer.