catalan way

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”. 

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. 

Catalan exports to Cuba grew by 50% in 2015, reaching €294 million. With this in mind, the Catalan Minister for Business and Knowledge, Jordi Baiget, and the director of the centre for the promotion of foreign trade ProCuba, Roberto Verrier, signed on Thursday in Havana an agreement that seeks to strengthen trade relations. ProCuba, under the Cuban Ministry for Foreign Trade and Foreign Investment, works to promote the internationalisation of the industry of the country. According to the agreement, Cuba will now provide Catalonia with information on the investment opportunities in the region in order to promote the arrival of new Catalan businesses to the island. Baiget, who is participating in a trade mission to Panama and Cuba organised by the Port of Barcelona and Acció, the Catalan Public competitiveness and internationalisation agency, stated that the measure was “really important”. It implies “direct capacity for dialogue” with the Cuban body responsible for foreign investment, he added.

Spain’s use of the courts to block the pro-independence roadmap has been reported to the 751 members of the European Parliament by three Catalan MEPs. Josep Maria Terricabras and Ernest Maragall, from left wing pro-independence party (ERC), and Ramon Tremosa, representing the Catalan European Democratic Party (PDeCAT) have sent a letter to their colleagues in the Eurochamber lamenting what they describe as “democratic regression in Spain”. The letter criticised the summonsing of Catalan elected representatives, such as Parliament’s President, Carme Forcadell, for “allowing a parliamentary debate on independence”. It also laments that former Catalan MP and current PDeCat spokesman in the Spanish Parliament, Frances Homs, faces trial for co-organising the 9-N symbolic vote on independence in 2014. 

Catalan gastronomy got reinforced and gained even more prestige in the presentation of the Spain and Portugal Michelin Guide 2017, one of the most important events on the world’s gastronomic calendar. There are now 67 restaurants awarded with a Michelin star in Catalonia. The most important ‘star’ went to ‘Lasarte’ Barcelona, which joins the select group of those outlets which have three ‘macarons’ in Catalonia, together with ‘El Celler de Can Roca’, which was named best restaurant in the world in 2013 and 2015, and ‘Sant Pau’, by Carme Ruscalleda. Moreover, ‘Lasarte’, led by Italian chef Paolo Casagrande, who was a disciple of renowned Basque chef Martín Berasategui, is not only the first three-Michelin star restaurant located in the Catalan capital but the only restaurant on the Iberian Peninsula which this year obtained its third ‘star’. 

Barcelona and Seoul will be connected through three direct flights per week from the 28th of April 2017. The Catalan Minister for Business and Knowledge, Jordi Baiget, announced this Wednesday that next year Korean Air, the largest airline in South Korea, will operate three flights - on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday - with capacity for 248 passengers each. The company currently operates flights to 129 destinations in 46 countries and in 2015 registered around 25 million passengers. Baiget detailed that the negotiation process to achieve an agreement started two years ago, on a trade mission and institutional trip of the Catalan Government to South Korea, and explained that the airline will extend the frequency to four days in the future “if things work well”.  

The Catalan Ministry for Economy and Tax Office presented this Wednesday the data of the macroeconomic chart to be included in the budget for 2017, which the Catalan executive expects to pass next week.  According to this document, the Catalan economy’s expected growth will be 3.4%, 0.5% more than the growth forecast for the Spanish economy, which is expected to be 2.9%. Regarding 2017, the chart keeps the figure released last May which foresaw 2.7% growth. According to the Catalan Vice-president and Minister for Economy and Tax Office, Oriol Junqueras, this figure is “considerably higher” than the expected growth for the Eurozone (1.5%). The budget for 2017 also foresees the creation of 160,000 jobs between 2016 and 2017. 

Catalonia and Japan have renewed their business, cultural, touristic and research ties for the next three years, through the so-called ‘Japan Plan 2016-2019’. The Government presented the agreement, approved last 25^th of October, on Monday and explained that it aims at boosting business promotion, investment attraction, tourism cooperation, student mobility and cultural and gastronomic exchange. While the presentation of the Plan was taking place on Monday morning in Barcelona, a mission organised by the Port of Barcelona and Acció, the Catalan Public competitiveness and internationalisation agency, was in Panama trying to improve the trade relationship with the Central America region. The Catalan Minister for Business and Knowledge, Jordi Baiget, and the Catalan Minister for Planning and Sustainability, Josep Rull, accompanied fifty Catalan companies on their visit to Panama and Cuba, where they held 300 meetings with local businesses.  

The new delegate of the Spanish executive in Catalonia, former MP Enric Millo, took office this Monday. The representative from the Catalan branch of the conservative People’s Party (PPC) assured that he is “willing to dialogue” and emphasised his predisposition to “reduce the distances” between the Spanish and Catalan institutions. He also insisted on the need to respect the Spanish Constitution, adding that it can be “modernised” but “through dialogue and consensus rather than through imposition”. The Catalan Government’s spokeswoman, Neus Munté, described Millo as a person “who is well aware of the Catalan reality” and admitted that “it wouldn’t be difficult” to find changes compared to Millo’s predecessor, María de los Llanos de Luna, regarding the predisposition to dialogue.

The Catalan Government paid tribute last Sunday to the 309 victims and their families that have been recognised as victims of Franco’s regime since 2009, the last time such a ceremony took place. During the event, which took place in Universitat de Barcelona’s auditorium, the Catalan Minister for Foreign Affairs, Raül Romeva compared “with due respect to the obvious differences” the justice of Franco’s dictatorship and that of the current Spanish State. “Today there are still echoes of the Francoist melody” he said, referring to the “interference of the Spanish Government in the judicial system”. Moreover, Romeva stated that despite having overcome the Francoist dictatorship, which reigned in Spain from 1939 until the dictator’s death in 1975, it still has to be proved whether Spain’s democracy “is worthy of the name”.

Exports from companies based in Catalonia reached €48.58 billion during the first 9 months of 2016, a 2.1% increase compared to the same period last year. According to the Spanish Ministry for Economy and Competitiveness, this figure sets a new historic high for Catalonia’s export sector, which has been growing strongly over the last few years. Moreover, in September Catalan exports were worth €5.7 billion, which is the highest figure for this month since the beginning of the historic series, in 2000. The sectors that contributed the most to the positive export figures were the chemical sector, which concentrated 60.8% of total exports, followed by equipment goods and the automotive sector. On the other hand, Catalonia’s trade deficit between January and September rose by 0.5% in comparison to the same period in 2015 and totalled €9.2 billion.