catalan way

The so-called ‘operation dialogue’ launched by the Spanish executive aims for Spain’s executive to have a greater presence in Catalonia. In line with this purpose, Spanish Vice President and recently named Minister for Territorial Administrations, Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, travelled to Barcelona this Wednesday. However, despite having committed to holding a meeting with her Catalan counterpart, Oriol Junqueras, Sáenz de Santamaría hasn’t even made a date for such a meeting. On the other hand, she met first with the opposition’s leader, Inés Arrimadas and with the Catalan Socialists’ leader, Miquel Iceta. The Catalan Government’s spokeswoman, Neus Munté, considered it “surprising” but “congratulated” Saénz de Santamaría for her “initiative” especially after the Spanish executive’s “enormous absence” in this sense. “Confrontation and using the courts have been the only answers so far”, lamented Munté.

The latest PISA survey shows that pupils in Catalonia have performed above the Spanish, European Union and Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) average in all subjects for the first time since the report series was launched in 2000. Catalan students had never reached a score of 500 in the three Pisa tests, always struggling with scientific and mathematical skills, but this time around they passed all of the exams. The average mark in Science is 504 points (12 points more than in the previous edition three years ago), 500 points in maths (7 more) and 500 in reading comprehension, losing a point compared to 2012. The average in Spain, the EU or the OECD is not 500 points or over for any of the three tests. According to the Catalan Minister for Education, Meritxell Ruiz, the results support the “transformation of the educational model” Catalonia has been undergoing since the introduction of the Education Act of Catalonia (LEC, going by its Catalan initials) in 2009.

The cross-party coalition 'Junts pel Sí' (JxSí) and the pro-independence radical-left CUP entered in the Catalan Parliament’s register a motion to defend the Parliament’s President, Carme Forcadell. The representative is facing criminal liability for allegedly disobeying Spanish Constitutional Court (TC) rulings and allowing the pro-independence roadmap to be put to vote on the 27th of July. According to the text presented by the pro-independence parties, the prosecution of Forcadell “for any parliamentary action flagrantly infringes upon parliamentary inviolability”. Furthermore, the proposal highlights that the criminalisation of parliamentary activity “poses a serious threat to democracy”. The motion was entered into the Parliament’s register on Monday as an urgent extraordinary request and with the express request to debate it in a plenary session. The text also aims at defending “the freedom of expression and the right of initiative of the members of the Catalan Parliament”.

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 laws for “disconnecting” Catalonia from Spain will not become effective unless the ‘Yes’ to independence wins the 2017 referendum. The spokesman of radical left pro-independence CUP’s national secretariat, Quim Arrufat, said in an interview with the Catalan News Agency that “no step forward will be made unless it is supported through the ballot boxes”. According to Arrufat, all the disconnection laws (the Legal Transition, the Catalan Tax Office and the Social Security System regulations) will have a clause that will impede them from entering into force if the ‘No’ to independence achieves a majority in the referendum. The politician focused on the legal transition law, which foresees the process for the Autonomous Community of Catalonia to become an independent state. He specified that the regulation will be applied in two steps, as part of the law will have to become effective before the referendum in order to call it even if the Spanish Government blocks it. The other clauses would only come into force in case of a pro-independence majority in the referendum.

The Catalan Vice President and Minister for Economy and Tax Office, Oriol Junqueras, voted against the new regional deficit target of 0.6% of GDP agreed between the Conservative People’s Party (PP) and the Spanish Socialists (PSOE). During the Council on Fiscal and Financial Policies (CPFF, going by its Catalan initials) on Thursday evening, Junqueras said that the target is “absolutely far from what citizens need and deserve”. The Catalan Government had asked for a 1.18% deficit target for 2017, but the Autonomous Communities’ limits were set instead at 0.6% for next year, 0.3% for 2018 and 0% of GDP for 2019. They were accepted despite the opposition of Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and Valencia. The communities led by the PSOE abstained. The Spanish Finance Minister, Cristóbal Montoro, celebrated the fact that only three territories voted against the measure, saying there was a “good atmosphere” at the meeting.

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 film ‘Lluvia en los Zapatos’ (‘Rain in the shoes’) by the Catalan director Maria Ripoll, will officially inaugurate the REC International Film Festival in Tarragona (southern Catalonia) this Thursday. In its sixteenth and most international edition yet, the REC International Film Festival seeks not only to introduce “new voices and talents” to the Catalan audience, but also to project Tarragona outward “as a generator of content”, the director of the event, Xavier Garcia Puerto said. From this Thursday and until the 6^th of December the Festival will screen some twenty films from eleven different countries, five of which are premieres in Spain and eleven in Catalonia. 

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 for the 2017 budget was published in the Parliament’s Official Journal this Tuesday. On Wednesday, the different groups in the Catalan Chamber will be able to present appeals and the whole bill will be discussed on the 20th of December. “This is the best budget possible”, Catalan Vice President and Minister for Economy and Tax Office, Oriol Junqueras, stated right after presenting the draft. “The time of cutbacks is over”, he assured and emphasised that the budget for 2017 has been enhanced in comparison to the previous one “both as a whole and in each department”. Indeed, the budget for 2017 allocates €1.1 billion more to social expenditure than the bill for 2015 – which was extended for 2016. The Health System with €8.7 billion and Education and Universities with €5.5 billion are the areas with the highest amounts allocated.

The Catalan railway network has 126 “black spots” (14.3% of which are in in Tarragona, southern Catalonia), which represent “significant delays for traffic and a risk to safety”, reported the rail national secretary of the union UGT-Catalonia, José Bravo, to the Catalan News Agency. With this in mind, the workers in Tarragona of Adif, the Spanish public body in charge of the railway infrastructure, reported this Tuesday to the European Parliament “the lack of investment and personnel” of the company, which threatens a “strategic sector” and impedes providing a “safe and quality” service in Catalonia. “We share the annoyance of the Catalan Government regarding the Spanish Government’s breaches of its commitments”, said Bravo, who added that the Spanish Government of the Conservative People’s Party (PP) has only executed 4,2% of the 2013 agreement to invest €306 million in Catalonia, the “minimum spending necessary to provide a secure service”.

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. 

The Catalan Minister for Education, Meritxell Ruiz, asked her counterpart in the Spanish Government, Íñigo Méndez de Vigo, to prove the willingness of the Spanish executive to “dialogue” by suspending the additional regulation of the Education Reform (LOMCE) which foresees that the Catalan Government has to pay 6,000 euros for each pupil who wants to receive education in Spanish in private schools. According to Ruiz, “whether this new path of dialogue actually starts or not” will depend on “the Minister’s answer to this petition”. The LOMCE “is an ideological law”, stated Ruiz this Monday, before meeting the Spanish minister in Madrid and added that the law, which now the new Spanish Government has opened to modification, “is terrible from a pedagogical perspective” and “breaks apart the Catalan education system”.