catalan way

The Catalan President, Artur Mas, stated on Thursday that he is happy to meet with Spanish President Mariano Rajoy in Madrid anytime if he calls a meeting. “If you say to someone that you are available to meet him when he wants and he does not come back to you, you get the impression that he does not want to see you”, Mas admitted during a parliamentary session in Barcelona. The Catalan and the Spanish government have been embroiled in the last few days in a discussion on whether or not the Catalans have requested a meeting, and whether or not this is actually going to happen.

The Catalan Government forecasts that unemployment will fall to 21.7% in 2014, and will be below 20% in 2015. This is according to the Macroeconomic Forecasts report published by the Catalan Ministry of the Economy on Monday. The report confirms the recovery of the Catalan economy, which has accumulated positive growth since the second quarter of 2013. For 2015, the Catalan Government expects the economy to grow 2.1%.

The Catalan Government has presented a new strategy to boost important industries such as chemical, energy and resources, design, sustainable mobility or healthcare. Those sectors will have, by September, a team of experts that will include members of Government and the most important companies, and will prepare strategic plans to help them develop further. The Catalan President, Artur Mas, said on Friday that Catalonia needs its industries, and urged businesspeople to work together with him in order to improve the state of the economy.

A newly published book, 'Catalunya de Pel·lícula' offers 25 trails, covering 300 sites across 145 Catalan towns that have together featured in over 175 films. The work aims to be a reference guide for all those tourists interested in the world of cinema, who want to learn famous Catalan destinations through thematic routes linked to films. The book, written by author Eugeni Osácar and published by the Department of the Catalan Tourism Agency, was presented on Thursday at the Palau Robert by Catalan Minister for Enterprise and Employment, Felip Puig.

The MEPs from the Centre-Right pro-Catalan State (CiU), Ramon Tremosa and Francesc Gambús, and the MEP from the Basque Nationalist Party (PNB), Izaskun Bilbao, wrote to the re-elected President of the European Parliament stating that the use of Catalan, Basque and Galician languages in the plenary just depends on a “political decision”. The MEPs asked the leader of the Chamber, a former bookshop owner, to show “respect” for their languages. Tremosa, Gambús and Bilbao said that the decision would cost nothing to the European Parliament as many Spanish translators also speak Catalan, Basque or Galician.

James Costos confirmed that the United States and its enterprises “are watching” the political process in Catalonia and are “of course interested in what the outcome will be”. The representative of the US government in Spain said in Madrid that in the event that “things change,” business needs to be prepared for this. “Business leaders have to look at things that are coming down the pike and take decisions based on that”, he stated.

On Sunday 29 June, a stellar cast performed 'Ferran Adrià and the factory of solidarity food', a comedy show which aimed to share the secrets of Catalan haute cuisine while raising money for the Casal dels Infants, a community centre for children in need. The Grand Theatre of Liceu was chosen as the venue where internationally renowned Catalan chefs Ferran Adrià, Carme Ruscalleda, Cristian Escribà and Joan Roca demonstrated how to cook in an 18th century kitchen, to commemorate the tercentenary of the War of Spanish Succession of 1714. Familiar faces such as journalist Josep Cuní or chef Alberto Chicote also participated in the show.

Speaking at the V Fórum Impulsa in Girona last Friday, the founder of Wikipedia, Jimmy Wales, discussed how the online encyclopaedia "protects and expands knowledge" of Catalan. In fact, it was one of the first languages to launch articles on the site, after English and German, and has now already amassed more than 400,000. Wales has highlighted Catalonia’s "passion for its language," and compared it with the Welsh Wikipedia, which is also “extremely active” despite Welsh being a relatively little spoken language. The creator of the free encyclopaedia was one of the featured speakers at the fifth edition of the Fórum Impulsa in Girona.

The Secretary General of the People’s Party, Maria Dolores de Cospedal, said that it is not “in any way” possible to reform the constitution to ease the demands of Catalonia, which is pushing for a referendum on independence from Spain. She also warned that the role of the new king, Felipe VI, is to protect Spanish unity. “The monarch’s mission is to ensure that national sovereignty is respected and to check that the unity of Spain is not put at risk”, she said during an event in Madrid.

The President of the Catalan Government reiterates his petition to Madrid to change the law in order to accommodate the wish of the Catalan people to vote on their future. Mas compared the political situation in Catalonia to that of a river which is about to overflow its banks. “If the people in charge of expanding the river edge don’t do it, they risk an overflow of water”, he stated. The Catalan President said Catalonia has always respected the law but law needs to adapt to “changing circumstances”.

The Spanish Minister of Home Affairs, Jorge Fernández Diaz, on Thursday restated his belief that Catalonia would become more “vulnerable” to terrorist attacks, drug trafficking and organised crime if it were to separate from Spain. He argued that "without the protective umbrella” of Spain’s security forces and collaboration with international intelligence agencies, these threats to Catalan security would increase. "United we are stronger than divided," he reiterated. Some have regarded this warning as over-dramatic, with the Catalan Minister of Home Affairs, Ramon Espadaler, describing it as “apocalyptic.”

Six Catalan performing arts companies have introduced their projects at the Greenwich and Docklands International Festival (GDIF) 2014 Showcase and a further three have taken part in the official program of the festival, thanks to the collaboration of the Culture Department and FiraTàrrega with GDIF. The 2014 edition of the renowned street arts festival will run from 20-28 June, showcasing some of the most interesting street theatre on the continent. Its director, Bradley Hemmings, told CNA that FiraTàrrega has "influenced the structure and development" of the show, one of the largest in the UK, and he was looking forward to receiving fresh Catalan projects.

The Catalan President argued in an interview that Catalonia will need to show “strength” in the wake of the referendum, scheduled for the 9^th of November. A coalition government with the two main parties in Parliament, the Centre-Right pro-Catalan State (CiU) and the Left-Wing Catalan Independence Party (ERC), has been on the cards for a long time. The leader of ERC, Oriol Junqueras, said previously that he is “absolutely ready” to form a coalition to “culminate the process” towards independence but that this would mean having an agreement on “all” issues, including economical ones.

Just 36.3% of Catalans have Catalan as their main language, according to a survey presented on Friday by the Catalan Ministry of Culture and the Catalan Institute of Statistics (Idescat). The survey examining language use in the population of 2013 found that 31% of the Catalan population had Catalan as their mother tongue and a slightly higher percentage usually converse in Catalan as their main language: 36.3%. Nonetheless, 55.1% of those surveyed reported having Spanish as their mother tongue, with 50.7% using Spanish as their main language. In 2003, 46% reported having Catalan as their main language, but this fell to 35.6% by 2008. Additionally, the report found that 94.3% of Catalans surveyed in 2013 could understand Catalan.

Catalan parties welcomed the new King in a cold manner, and some were even directly absent from the coronation and participated instead in events in favour of a republican regime. However, after a few days of uncertainty, the President of the Catalan Government and leader of the Centre-Right pro-Catalan State CiU, Artur Mas, attended the ceremony in Madrid. Despite the fact that CiU did not give its explicit support to the King's succession, the CiU representatives were all present at the ceremony, although without showing enthusiasm. In addition, Mas insisted that he continues with his "wait and see" attitude, as the King's speech "did not offer anything new". Meanwhile, representatives from the Left-Wing Catalan Independence Party (ERC) did not attend the ceremonies, neither did representatives from the Catalan Green Socialist Coalition (ICV-EUiA), who participated in a small pro-republic demonstration in Barcelona at the exact same time the new King was swearing the Constitution.