spanish

The General Strike on March 29th ended without significant changes in the Spanish Government’s Labour Reform, but with a clear acknowledgement that there is growing social anger. The strike was unevenly supported in Catalonia. Unions talked about sector strike participation ranging between 97% and 57% and the Catalan Government about strike participations ranging between 24% and 10%. Minimum services worked as planned, without any significant incidents. Demonstrations took place in the main Catalan cities, with the largest in Barcelona. Isolated violent incidents were the only negative parts of what was a relatively calm day.

The Spanish Minister for the Economy, Luís de Guindos, announced in Barcelona the future creation of the so-called ‘hispanobonds’, common bonds issued by the Autonomous Communities and backed by the Spanish Treasury. The objective is to reduce high interests rates, and thus the financial costs that the Autonomous Communities have to pay when they turn towards financial markets to get liquidity. The Catalan Finance Minister proposed the original idea several few weeks ago.

The Argentine international just keeps on breaking all the record. This time he has beaten FC Barcelona record of 34 Spanish League goals in a season held by Brazilian striker Ronaldo since the 1996/97 season. Messi’s current tally stands at 35. He also equaled Philip Cocu’s record of 205 league appearances for Barça.

Goals from Messi and Piqué either side of half time gave Barça a vital win against Mallorca, with Thiago’s sending off the only negative as Guardiola’s men continue to hunt down the Spanish League leaders, Real Madrid.

FC Barcelona Manager, Pep Guardiola, is still playing things cautiously despite the reduced distance between Barça and Real Madrid, the current Spanish League leaders. “I still think there are a lot of points to win back”, he said. He also highlighted how 15 of the 19 players picked to go to Mallorca are products of the club itself, coming from Barça’s La Masia football school.

Real Madrid dropped two more points with their second successive 1-1 draw against Villarreal in their last Spanish League game. After Barça’s win against Granada, the Catalans have reduce the gap from 10 to 6 points in only four days. The chase for the Spanish League’s leadership is livelier than ever.

With his three goals against Granada, Leo Messi surpasses César’s record and became the all-time top goalscorer in the history of FC Barcelona in official matches with 234 goals.

Leo Messi’s hat-trick against Granada has made him the highest goalscorer in FC Barcelona history, while goals from Xavi and Tello also helped to put Barça within five points of the Spanish League leader, Real Madrid.

Two superb first half goals from Xavi and Messi gave Barça the win in Seville, with an excellent performance – particularly in the first half-that’ll be a real morale boost for FC Barcelona.

The Barça manager reckons the real tests are only about to begin, in all of the Champions League, Spanish League and Cup. From now on, he warns, “there is no turning the page after any setbacks.” He also feels that it will be of benefit to everybody that the return leg of the Champions League quarter final against AC Milan will be at the Camp Nou. Besides, Guardiola said on Abidal that right now nothing is more important than “finding a solution to the illness he’s suffering so that he can carry on with his life”.

The Catalan Government had already approved a 3% reduction of public salaries during the current year, which will now be increased to 5%. However, the President of the Catalan Government, Artur Mas, explained that the measure would be cancelled if the Spanish Government approved a similar reduction, in order not to harm public employees with two salary reductions. The People’s Party supports Mas but the Left-Wing opposition parties have criticised the measure and have said that there are other ways to reduce the deficit. Mas demanded that the Spanish Government include the funds it legally owes Catalonia in its budget for 2012 which would avoid further cutbacks.

Leo Messi was again on target against Racing de Santander, scoring both goals as Barça extended its winning run to six games with a 0-2 win. However, Real Madrid did also win against Betis and is still 10 points ahead, on top of the Spanish League.

The highest Catalan court has clarified how to execute the sentence of the Spanish Supreme Court that had recognised the right of 3 families to school their children in Spanish and not in Catalan. These families will have their individual rights respected, but the current school model will not be changed. Catalonia’s education model has been validated twice by the Spanish Constitutional Court and has been in place over the last 30 years, guaranteeing full knowledge of both official languages –Catalan and Spanish– by all its pupils. Experts advise that the current school model prioritises the weakest official language –Catalan- following the principles of equal opportunities and social cohesion. The model has been praised by UNESCO, the European Commission and the European Parliament.

Catalan hotels registered in 2011 a new tourist record of 48.029.385 overnight stays. Foreign tourism increased by 10.6% in 2011. However the economic crisis led to a 2.5% fall in domestic tourism. Catalonia hosted 16.5 million of tourists last year, a 5% increase regarding 2010 figures.

The enlargement of Barcelona Port, where Hutchison’s new container terminal will be located, was supposed to be linked by International-width standard railway to Central Europe and be better connected by road. However, the Spanish Minister for Transport and Public Works, Ana Pastor, announced that work cannot start this year; neither can she guarantee the provisional solution will be in place in June, when the new container terminal was supposed to start operating. Since the Spanish Government has not started the work, the technical studies have expired. “Hopefully they will be redone by the end of the year”, said Pastor.