The Spanish Wall

If on tuesday the news were PSC’s refusal to support Catalan interests at the Spanish Parliament to claim the 1400 million euros from the Competitiviness Fund that the Spanish had committed to transfer and now refuse to fast forward a couple of days and the news come full of complaints from members of the Catalan Government regarding the Spanish Government’s actions.

The Spanish Government have been carrying a very aggressive campaign against Catalonia on all fronts and all Catalan demands have been hitting a wall.

Firstly, for the first time in 30 years the Spanish Government has cancelled the decision of the Catalan Government of opening 1245 new places for secondary school teachers and instead wants to allow only 430, without consulting the Catalan government. While this could be understandable under certain cost saving parameters the Spanish Government don’t seem interested in applying the same restrictions to Andalucía’s decision to offer more than 3000 new teacher positions. If Catalonia had applied Andalucía’s parameters they would have been able to open 2800.

On the infrastructures side of things, after the Catalan railway system having suffered 4 accidents in the last two months it has been made public that for the period 2008-2015 only works worth 306 million euros out of the 4000 the Spanish Government commited to invest in the Catalan railway system have been carried out and the Spanish Minister José Blanco has refused to invest the 1900 million the Catalan Government is urgently demanding.

And in to top it up Ossa, a Catalan motorbike company is considering to relocate outside of Catalonia if the Catalan Government can’t help it to secure a loan to cover for orders already committed for the next few years. It seems that several Spanish Autonomous Communities have offered the company to cover relocation costs and provide all financing required. Catalonia must be a unique case in the world by financing the relocation abroad of its own companies.

All these examples should lead to raising the question of why should Catalonia allow the plundering of 10% of its GDP by a State that impedes its normal functioning while not applying the same budgetary cuts to itself and on top of it grotesquely blaming Catalonia for the Spanish deficit on the international level (and some international media shockingly playing along)?

Picture by zebble under Creative Commons license

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