Simon Harris's Blog, page 19
February 1, 2015
Traducció de Catalonia Is Not Spain al català
El projecte per traduïr Catalonia Is Not Spain Crowdfunding Project ja està actiu en Verkami. He escrit una explicació sencera i una llista de recompenses en català (amb l’ajuda del traductor Rafel Marco i Molina de aixòcomesdiu), espanyol (encara falta la correcció) i anglès. Volem publicar el llibre abans de Sant Jordi el 23 d’abril i per tant anem una mica contra rellotge.
Sería genial genial si poguessis fer una petita contribució al projecte i el compartessis amb amics independentistes. Hem de fer saber els motius històrics per què Catalunya necesita un estat propi.
Si vols ajudar, cliceja en l’imatge abaix!
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¿Realment, què sap el món de Catalunya, una de les primeres nacions d’Europa, i del seu paper com a gran imperi medieval?
En el llibre Catalonia is not Spain: A Historical Perspective, l’autor Simon Harris condueix el lector a través de mil anys de la Història de Catalunya, alhora que posa l’accent en la sovint difícil relació entre el Principat i una Castella que s’erigeix en dominadora d’Espanya. Aquesta genèrica i ponderada repassada de la història ofereix una visió, des d’un punt de vista català, de les bases de l’actual situació política i de per què Catalunya es troba ara en el procés de decidir si vol convertir-se en un estat independent (o no).
Catalonia is not Spain: A Historical Perspective és un llibre important en aquest moment perquè aporta la base històrica de les raons per les quals Catalunya es vol separar d’Espanya. Un dels motius pels quals els catalans s’han manifestat ara amb tanta força és que el Govern central espanyol rebutja totalment acceptar cap identitat que no s’emmotlli al seu estàndard i, malauradament, Castella, i en menor mesura Andalusia, s’han convertit en sinònims d’Espanya. A diferència del Regne Unit, on Anglaterra, Escòcia, País de Gal•les i Irlanda del Nord són acceptats com a països, amb la seva identitat i cultura, Espanya només arriba a acceptar de mala gana que els bascs i els catalans són diferents de la resta dels espanyols. L’acceptació de la identitat és una de les principals diferències entre el recent procés escocès i l’actual procés independentista català.
Edició anglesa
Editat originalment l’octubre de 2014, *Catalonia Is Not Spain*està disponible en anglès.
Versió impresa i per a Kindle a Amazon.es
Versió impresa i per a Kindle a Amazon.co.uk
Versió impresa i per a Kindle a Amazon.com
En aquests moments no tenim distribució a les llibreries i estem oberts a qualsevol proposta. Podeu posar-vos en contacte amb nosaltres mitjançant els enllaços del final de la pàgina.
Podeu llegirs els posts en anglès que composen el llibre aquí
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Catalonia Is Not Spain Crowdfunding Project
The Catalonia Is Not Spain Crowdfunding Project to translate the book into Catalan is now live on Verkami. I’ve written a full explanation and a number of rewards in English, Catalan (with the help of translator Rafel Marco i Molina of aixòcomesdiu) and Spanish (still pending correction). We would like to publish the book before Sant Jordi on April 23rd so time is of the essence and in order to make this possible I’ll need some professional proofreading, editing, layout and design help.
It would be fantastic if you made a modest contribution to the project and shared it with both your pro-independence friends or anyone who wants to find out more about the underlying cultural, historical and linguistic reasons why Catalonia wants to have at least the right to vote on independence from Spain.
If you want to contribute or find out more, please click on the image below.
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Description of the Catalonia Is Not Spain Crowdfunding Project
We are translating Catalonia is not Spain: A Historical Perspective into Catalan. In the book, author Simon Harris takes the reader through 1,000 years of Catalan history concentrating principally on the often difficult relations between the Principality and a Castile-dominated Spain.
So What’s The Book About?
How much does the world know about Catalonia and its role as a great medieval empire and one of Europe’s first nation states?
In Catalonia is not Spain: A Historical Perspective author Simon Harris takes the reader through 1,000 years of Catalan history focusing on the Principality’s often difficult relationship with Castile-dominated Spain. This insightful and balanced history gives an insider’s view of the background to the current political situation and why Catalonia is now in the process of deciding whether or not it wants to be independent from Spain.
Why is the book important?
Catalonia is not Spain: A Historical Perspective is important at this point in time because it provides a historical background to the reasons why Catalonia wants to separate from Spain. One of the why Catalans have become so adamant is that Spanish central government refuses to fully accept any identity that doesn’t conform to its own standard and unfortunately, Castilian or to a lesser extent Andalusian have become synonyms for Spanish. Unlike the United Kingdom, where England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are accepted as countries with their own culture and identity, Spain finds only grudgingly accepts Basque and Catalan as being different from Spanish. The identity problem is one of the main differences between the recent Scottish and the current Catalan independence processes.
English Edition
Originally published in 2014, Catalonia Is Not Spain is available in English.
Paperback and Kindle version on Amazon.es
Paperback and Kindle version on Amazon.co.uk
Paperback and Kindle version on Amazon.com
At the time of writing, we don’t have distribution to bookshops but are open to any serious proposal. You can get in contact by using the links at the end of the page.
You can also read the draft blog posts that form the basis of the book here
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January 31, 2015
An Adopted Catalan
When I arrived in Barcelona in 1988, I landed in what I thought was Barcelona, Spain. I had no idea that Catalonia had ever been a separate country or had aspirations of separating from Spain again in the future. I immediately fell in love with life in the city of Barcelona and my early trips up the coast and out into the Catalan countryside convinced me that I’d wound up in a pretty cool place.
Catalonia still felt like a region of Spain to me so given the choice of two languages, I opted to learn Spanish rather than Catalan. All the bilingual Catalans spoke Spanish anyway and it would also mean I’d get by on jaunts around the rest of Spain.
Adaptation
The Catalanisation process was a slow one. I suppose it began by choosing to support FC Barcelona rather than Real Madrid and continued as I started to watch more and more television in Catalan. In those days, Spanish television was as dreadful as it is now with game shows, South American soap operas and dumb gossip programmes.
I vividly remember the first time I switched the dial on my cheap portable TV over to Catalan TV3 and was greeted by an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation. In fact, the ‘Space the final frontier..’ introduction was the first thing I ever memorised in the Catalan language. What’s more, I was probably feeling a bit homesick and lots of British series were shown on TV3. Dubbed versions of sitcoms, such as Fawlty Towers, The Young Ones, Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em and Yes, Minister, and soaps such as Eastenders, Coronation Street and Neighbours all made me feel much more at home even if it was a little surrealistic watching Michael Crawford say ‘Oooh, Betty …’ and then continue in Catalan.
This must have been around 1989 or 1990 and I wasn’t yet familiar with some of the differences between Catalan and Spanish culture. To be perfectly honest, it all seemed a foreign jumble to me. I do remember thinking, though, that if these people chose to show British TV series, they probably had more in common with me than the ones that chose to show South American soaps and bullfighting.
Obviously my grasp of the language improved very quickly and I began to notice the positive effect that a few words of Catalan had on people. I was mainly freelance English teaching at the time and every time I went to meet a new client things seemed to go better if I introduced myself in Catalan, apologised for my limitations and then switched to Spanish. So in many respects my first reason for getting to grips with the language was in order to get better work.
A Personal Introduction
The crucial person in this early period, though, was my ex-wife’s, then girlfriend’s, Aunt Magdalena, a committed Catalanist who was in her sixties and so had lived in Barcelona throughout most of the turbulent 20th century. Aunt Magdalena told me stories of the Spanish Civil War, of linguistic and political repression under Franco and of the celebrations in Barcelona on the night the dictator died. As they were all personal anecdotes, everything hit home much more deeply and my imagination was fired. I remember one story she told of how, unlike most of her generation, she learnt to read and write in Catalan.
In 1939, as soon as the Civil War was over, all schooling was done in Spanish even though this was long before the mass immigration to Catalonia from the rest of Spain began in the 1950s. All the children and teachers at Magdalena’s school in the working-class neighbourhood of Poblenou spoke Catalan as their first language but weren’t allowed to speak it in class.
Magdalena’s class teacher made a pact with the children and their parents. All lessons would be done in Castilian Spanish during the school day and the children would stay behind for an extra hour to go over the lessons again in Catalan. This would serve both as revision and the chance to study in Catalan but it had to be a secret and the schoolbooks couldn’t leave the classroom under any circumstances. The teacher hid them behind the false back of the classroom cupboard. As she was apparently quite pretty, every time the school inspector came, she would flirt with him to make sure he didn’t look too closely at what was in the cupboard.
Magdalena and her friend Mercè would also take my ex-wife and I on cultural excursions out into different parts of Catalonia and this was taken as a great excuse for her to teach me Catalan history. She had had polio as a child and had a walking stick that she used not only as a means of support but also as a form of exclamatory punctuation as she told her stories. I vividly remember standing on the beach at Cambrils as she waved her stick in the air in the vague direction of the Balearic Islands and proclaiming that it was here from where the fleet of Jaume I the Conqueror had sailed on the quest to capture Mallorca from the Saracens.
Magdalena’s claims that Catalonia had once had an empire covering a third of Spain, the bottom half of France and most of the Mediterranean, including parts of Italy and Greece, struck me as a bit far-fetched. However, I started reading up on the subject in various languages, English, Catalan and Spanish, and found that all these claims were backed up by reputable historians. Why had I never heard anything about this? I wondered.
Integration
In 1992, I moved to the Barcelona suburb of Sant Andreu and set up home with my future wife. Having moved away from the city centre expat haunts, my integration process accelerated. Gradually my social life became more locally centred and pretty quickly I was a regular attender at the Narcis Sala football stadium, home to third division UE Sant Andreu.
I also got to know my in-laws much better and to a certain extent, became a member of a Catalan family. One of the things that struck me was how Catalan they were in private but how Spanish they were in public. Catalan was the only language spoken over Sunday dinner and in the private of the family home.
After lunch, Jaume, my Catalan father-in-law, and I would often go for a beer in one of the local bars. As the lift hit the ground floor and we walked out into the street, he suddenly became Jaime using the Spanish version of his name and only speaking Spanish.
It struck me as very strange having two versions of your name, one private and one public. I can only surmise that the change in identity went back to the Franco period when, if not completely illegal, it was definitely frowned upon if you spoke Catalan in public. Nearly 20 years after the death of the dictator this was the learned behaviour of someone with no particular political axe to grind, who had always prioritised earning a decent living for his family and keeping his nose clean.
Another formative experience attending the wedding of one of my wife’s cousins in L’Empordà up near the French border. Half the guests were Spanish and the other half were French and included the children of uncles and aunts who had moved across the border during the dictatorship. The language by everyone was Catalan and this was the first time I realised that the Catalan identity stretched beyond the borders of Spain. Perhaps the Catalans were a stateless nation who occupied a territory much larger than modern Catalonia. These people obviously were united by a common language.
In 1994, my daughter Carme was born and becoming the father of a little Catalan girl, brought home what the term ‘mother tongue’ really meant. When a mother comforts their baby or sings them to sleep at night they do this in the language that comes most naturally to them and in my wife’s case it was Catalan. Speaking to her daughter in her native language certainly wasn’t any kind of strident political as some people had led me to believe.
A Political Perspective
By the time, Jose Maria Aznar’s first Partido Popular government came to power in 1997, my affections were already Catalan to some extent but beyond the odd insult for supporting Barça and once getting physically thrown out of a bar in Mallorca for ordering in Catalan, I wasn’t really aware of how much the simple existence of Catalan annoyed a certain section of Spanish society. This all changed very quickly under a Partido Popular government.
It immediately obvious that the Partido Popular’s electoral tactic was to appeal to conservative deep Spain by attacking Catalans and Basques in much the same way as right-wing parties in Britain attack immigrants and attempt to create ‘an ogre within’! As the legislature continued, so did the anti-Catalan insults, especially from the likes of Minister of Culture Esperanza Aguirre. Although I felt I was being pushed towards an increasingly Catalanist position, the idea of Catalonia being an independent state was very far from my mind.
My political position at the time was in favour of PSC, the Catalan affiliate of PSOE, the Spanish equivalent of the Labour Party. Despite being increasingly fascinated by Catalan history, culture and language, my view on the purely Catalan political parties was that the hopes of Esquerra Republicana for an independent Catalonia were simply not realistic and the middle-class conservatism of Convergència i Unió smacked of racism at times.
One might not be totally happy that more than 2 million Spanish-speaking emigrants had come to Catalonia during Franco’s dictatorship but in order for Catalonia to live in harmony, they had to be integrated. PSC, which was basically an alliance between working-class Andalusian trades unionists and middle-class Catalan left-wing intelligentsia, seemed the only party capable of doing this intelligently.
In Defence of Education
My daughter had started pre-school in 1997 but it was when she began Primary School in 1999 that I really got the chance to see the Catalan education system from the inside.
I hadn’t really given the idea of linguistic immersion much thought before but in a neighbourhood like Sant Andreu, which is about 50% Catalan-speaking and 50% Spanish-speaking, it definitely made sense that the main language of teaching was Catalan. My daughter came from a bilingual Catalan-English home but had picked up Castilian Spanish through television and other kids at pre-school so by the time she started proper school she was comfortably trilingual.
Lots of her friends, who spoke Spanish at home and only watched Spanish TV, though, would never learn Catalan unless proactive measures were taken. Teaching the majority of subjects in Catalan definitely seemed the best way to ensure that all my daughter’s classmates would grow up bilingual. This in the long run was the best way to guarantee a peaceful and integrated society.
As I was quite happy with the education my daughter was getting, I was appalled to see attacks from Madrid on the Catalan school system and Esperanza Aguirre’s plans to make Catalan optional and homogenise the humanities syllabus. Having done quite a lot of reading about Catalan and Spanish history by that point, I obviously realised that they were two quite different stories. Normally the Spanish version simply didn’t bother to mention Catalonia’s medieval empire and the story of the reconquest of the Iberian peninsula’s eastern coast has nothing to do with the Spanish legend of Covadonga and the Reconquista of Christian Spain.
It seemed appalling that if central government had its way my daughter would be forced to learn an edited version of the truth. I already realised that a false picture of national Spanish unity and linguistic and cultural homogeneity was in conflict with the Catalan view that Spain was a group of states that had cobbled together a nation in the 15th century.
Another effect of having a school age daughter was that it acted as a motivation to really take my Catalan to another level. I could kind of get by but it seemed to me of enormous importance to be able to help my daughter with her homework and the only way to be able to do that was by working on my Catalan. It was interesting actually because I started off with really easy subjects when my daughter was five and things got progressively more difficult.
I also started reading a lot more history and politics and colleagues at the British Council began commenting on how strange I was for being so keen on Catalan. However, the language was a key factor in getting a teaching job at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona so perhaps I wasn’t so strange after all!
By this time I was also already writing what would later become my first book Going Native in Catalonia, which was published in 2007. I suppose I was a Catalanist in all but the idea of full independence. I identified completely with the defence of the Catalan language and culture and saw the validity of Catalonia’s complaints against the centralist Spanish government but separating from Spain completely still seemed a little impractical.
Autonomy and Democracy
Furthermore, since Zapatero’s PSOE government had replaced Aznar’s PP government in 2004, the atmosphere of tension appeared to have subsided considerably. All political decisions were still being taken in Madrid but at least Catalonia wasn’t on the receiving end of attacks and insults.
Around 2006 I finally picked on news that a new Statute of Autonomy was being drafted. Popularly known as the Estatut, it would bring the out of date 1978 Statute into line with current feelings and specifically recognise some of Catalonia’s historic differences with the rest of Spain. This seemed like a perfect compromise to me.
The new Estatut was finalised and approved by the Catalan Parliament in 2006 and although I heard complaints that quite a few clauses had been removed or modified by the Spanish Parliament in Madrid, it still felt like a step forward to me. The revised document received a convincing majority when it was put to the vote here in Catalonia. In fact, at the time my argument was that now we had a few more rights in the bag, the next step would be to push for some more.
I heard rumours that the Partido Popular were going to appeal against the Estatut but not being actively involved in politics at the time, I didn’t take them very seriously. Furthermore, in autumn 2008 I became quite ill so I was busy worrying about other things. Just as I was pulling through the worst of the illness in the late-spring of 2010, it seemed if the Spanish Constitutional Court ruling on the Estatut was about to be announced.
I dismissed talk that Madrid would never cede any extra power to Catalonia as pessimistic fear-mongering. The news broke that the Estatut had been declared unconstitutional on June 27th . I couldn’t believe it. I was utterly and completely flabbergasted.
How could it be? The Estatut had been voted on by the Parliament of Catalonia, approved by the Spanish Congress and Senate in Madrid and finally ratified by the Catalan people. After so many democratic processes how could it possibly be unconstitutional?
At that moment, I, and many like me realised that however much Catalonia tried to make a space for itself within Spain, its claims would always be rejected because difference could not be tolerated. I’d been a Catalanist for a long time but it was only after the Constitutional Court ruling that it became clear that independence for Catalonia was the only way forward.
A couple of weeks later, I joined more than million Catalans on the demonstration in central Barcelona against the Estatut sentence and shouted “Som una nació. Nosaltres decidem” – ‘We are nation. We decide.’ – until I was hoarse. I don’t think many of us were very clear of the way forward but as events since then have shown that there is no turning back.
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*This is a draft version ofthe first chapter of my book Catalonia Is Not Spain: A Historical Perspective
Read More Here
Buy Catalonia Is Not Spain on Amazon.es
We are currently running a crowdfunding to translate the book into Catalan and Spanish, so if you’ve enjoyed this extract and would like to be able to read it in your native language, please consider making a contribution.
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January 26, 2015
The Reapers War
After a little over a century under a united monarchy, the Reapers War was Catalonia’s first attempt at secession from Castile and was a response to general discontent and marginalisation. The Guerra dels Segadors as the Reapers’ War is known in Catalan marked the beginning of a period when Catalonia became the battleground where Castile and France fought out their internecine rivalries. A strategic terra de pas or passageway between the two great powers, it seems as though Catalonia was always destined to lose out.
When the Thirty Years War broke out in 1618, it was only a question of time before the tense relations between centralising Castile and peripheral Catalonia finally came to a head.
An Atmosphere of Discontent
Although the Principality was still technically separate from Castile and the other territories of the former Crown of Aragon, the previous century since the death of Ferdinand of Aragon in 1516 had marked a gradual erosion of Catalonia’s traditional laws and rights. The Corts were called increasingly less frequently so the Catalan nobility and the rising urban bourgeoisie felt that their complaints went unheard by an absentee king.Furthermore, not only the viceroy but the majority of the government officials in Catalonia were Castilians and the locals were very unhappy about the progressive introduction of taxes that had only previously been paid in Castile.
Outbreaks of the black plague, successive crop failures and the economic downturn that resulted from the main trade routes shifting from the Mediterranean to the Atlantic with access to Northern Europe and the Americas, from which Catalonia was prohibited from trading, made matters worse. Similarly, scandals surrounding the ever unpopular Spanish Inquisition whose inquisitors regularly trumped-up accusations against Catalan nobles and merchants in order to keep their possessions only added fuel to the fire.
Much the same as today, the attitude of the government was that Catalans were unfairly privileged and should be forced to contribute equally to Castile’s military campaigns both in terms of finance and manpower. In 1626, Phillip IV’s main advisor the Count-Duke Olivares instituted what was known as the Union of Arms, in which each of the Spanish monarch’s territories would be obliged to send conscripts to an imperial army. All Spain’s non-Castilian territories were extremely unhappy about this with negative reactions coming most notably from Portugal, Naples, Sicily and of course Catalonia, which based on the results of a vastly overestimated census was required to send 16,000 men as well as a million ducats.
If the situation wasn’t bad enough, following the entry of France into the Thirty Years War in 1635, Count-Duke Olivares sent thousands of Castilian troops to protect the Catalan border with France against the forces of Louis XIII. The Castilians behaved like the foreigners they were and forcibly took over complete villages in Northern Catalonia and turned them into barracks. Crops were stolen and trashed and a regime of terror was imposed on the peasant population with predictable consequences for local women.
In January 1640, a combined force of royal troops and Catalan militia under the viceroy the Duke of Santa Coloma retook the town of Salses in Rousillon from the French. Flushed with success Count-Duke Olivares wanted to continue north to take Paris and conscripted another 5,000 Catalans.
As violence broke out in the countryside and the Catalan peasants turned on the Castilian troops, the President of the Generalitat Pau Claris began secret negotiations with Cardinal Richelieu, France’s first minister.
On 22nd May 1640, 3,000 rural peasants from El Vallès led by the bishops of Vic and Barcelona arrived in Barcelona. In the Empordà, peasants murdered royal officials who had taken refuge in a convent, the Spanish troops withdrew to Rousillon committing violent acts of revenge in Calonge, Palafrugell, Roses and towns along the way. However, it was on Corpus Christi on 7th June 1640, which would later become known as the Corpus of Blood that things really came to a head.
The Corpus of Blood
On June 7th, day labourers from Central Catalonia as well as escaping militia men from the North arrived in the rural town of Sant Andreu de Palomr just outside Barcelona looking for work as reapers. With little work available and angered by the Castilian troops, the reapers took the flag of the parish of Sant Andreu as their standard and set out for Barcelona.
As the march progressed, more peasants arrived from the countryside and the reapers were joined by city workers. Castilian officials fled for their lives as buildings were destroyed and the mob made for the viceroy’s palace, which they sacked and burned. The viceroy the Duke of Santa Coloma had made for the beach hoping to find a boat and flee the city and it was there that the reapers caught and killed him.
A full-scale revolution had broken out and the representatives of the Generalitat, principally Pau Claris and Francesc de Tamarit realised that this was a now or never opportunity for Catalonia to become fully independent from the Spanish monarchy. With promises of independence, Pau Claris managed to placate the rebels and by June 11th, the reapers had left the city.
Castilian troops invaded Catalonia commanded by the Marquis of Velez but suffered a resounding defeat in Barcelona at the Battle of Montjuïc on 26 January 1641. Pau Claris began further negotiations with the French ambassador Du Plessis Besancon and in December 1641 under the Treaty of Ceret, Catalonia became an independent republic under the protection of France. However, France’s Cardinal Richelieu died in 1642 and was soon followed by King Louis XIII. At the same time, as a result of uprisings not only in Catalonia but in Portugal, Naples and Sicily as well, Phillip IV dismissed the provocative Count-Duke Olivares and the reasons for war suddenly changed.
Catalonia remained a French protectorate but its role as a terra de pas a passageway and disputed territory between the great powers of Castile and France soon became clear. Although French troops entered Catalonia as allies of the Catalan rebels, they behaved in much the same way as the Castilian troops had and Catalan peasants were left with the sensation that little had changed.
Catalan hopes for independence took another blow following the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 which put an end to the major conflicts of the Thirty Years War, and now the Castilian troops were fully freed to campaign against Catalonia. Later that year they captured Lleida and a year later advanced almost as far as Barcelona and it was now only a question of time before Catalonia would fall.
In 1651, Juan José of Austria, Phillip IV’s illegitimate son began the Siege of Barcelona and regained at least Mataró, Canet de Mar, Calella, Blanes, Sant Feliu de Guíxols and Palamós in less than a year. The Generalitat recognised Phillip IV, and Francesc de Margarit, the Generalitat’s president following the death of Pau Claris fled to France. Following a fifteen-month siege, the city of Barcelona finally surrendered to Juan José of Austria on 11 October 1652 and in January 1653, Phillip IV confirmed the privileges of Catalonia with some important limitations.
The Treaty of the Pyrenees
The negotiations and peace between Castile and France were a long drawn out affair but finally Phillip IV, Luis de Haro and Pedro Coloma for the Castilians and Louis XIV, Cardinal Mazarin and Hugues de Lionne met on Pheasant Island on the Basque border between France and Spain in November 1659. The treaty brought the Thirty Years War to an end and France was given control of the Catalan territories of Rousillon, Conflent, Vallespir and part of Cerdanya in return for the French giving up claims to Spanish territories in Flanders.
The settlement was reached without consulting the Corts Catalanes and not only was Catalan territory carved up but the French quickly abolished Catalan laws and the use of the Catalan language thus breaking the agreement signed by Louis XIII. The affected territories conspired to return to Catalonia and Catalonia only finally accepted their loss officially in 1720, after the defeat in the War of Spanish Succession of which we shall hear more in the next chapter.
As a final observation on the importance of Catalonia and its territories to centralising Castile, it is worth pointing out that, unlike Gibraltar or Menorca, which were ceded to Great Britain in the Treaty of Utrecht in 1713, no Spanish government has ever complained about the loss of the Northern Catalan territories. Perhaps this is because they have never really considered Catalona to be a bona fide part of Spain.
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This is a draft chapter from my book Catalonia Is Not Spain: A Historical Perspective. You can buy the English version on line and we are about to start work on translations into Catalan and Castilian.
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January 22, 2015
Artur Mas TV3 Interviews
In this post, I pull together all the Artur Mas TV3 Interviews from the Diada 2012 to the present mainly as a reference for my own projects. What I find most interesting is how consistent he is. The Catalan President’s discourse has barely changed since the start of the Catalan independence process!
Toni Cruanyes – 15/1/2015
This interview took place immedately after Artur Mas and Oriol Junqueras reached an agreement on continuing the Catalan independence process and the President announced that there would be elections on September 27th 2015 through which the Catalan people would be able to decided their future.
Monica Terribas – 27/9/2014
Interview held after the President signed the decree calling the consultation for November 9th 2014.
Lídia Heredia and Carles Prats – 16/12/2013
This interview was given just after the date and question was announced for the consultation was announced for November 9th 2014.
http://www.ccma.cat/tv3/alacarta/Entr...
Elections November 2012
Xavier Bosch interviews Artur Mas two days before the elections – Àgora 23/11/2012 (30 mins)
http://www.ccma.cat/tv3/alacarta/Cand...
Interview on Els Matins with Ariadna Oltra – 20/11/2012 – 5 days before the elections just after El Mundo had made the (false) accusations of corruption against Artur Mas.
http://www.ccma.cat/tv3/alacarta/Els-...
Xavier Bosch on Àgora – 1/10/2012
Interview with Artur Mas the evening before the dissolution of the Parliament of Catalonia prior to the early elections on November 25th 2012.
http://www.ccma.cat/tv3/alacarta/Agor...
2/12/2011 – Monica Terribas
Just before my main period of interest, I haven’t watched it yet!!!!
http://www.ccma.cat/tv3/alacarta/Tele...
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January 19, 2015
Catalan Political Parties prior to November 2012 Elections
Chapter 6 of the yet to have a title book project gives an overview of the Catalan political parties prior to the early elections to the Parliament of Catalonia called by Artur Mas for November 2012.
Catalan Political Parties
Already in a state of flux, the Diada demonstration and the calling of early elections for November 25th 2012 caused something of a tsunami in Catalan politics. The previous elections to the Parliament of Catalonia had been held exactly two years earlier in November 2010, making the current legislature the shortest since the return of democracy.
In the 2010 elections, the traditional two-party system had already begun to break down with fragmentation particularly on the left of the political spectrum. Convergència i Unió (CiU) had been clear winners with 62 seats out of 135 followed by the Partit de Socialistes de Catalunya (PSC-PSOE) in a very poor second with only 28 seats. The Catalan subsidiary of the Partido Popular, the Partido Popular de Catalunya (PPC) had a strong representation for them of 18 seats whilst the ecosocialist-communist coalition of Iniciativa per Catalunya-Verds and Esquerra Unida i Alternativa (ICV-EUiA) maintained their position with 10 seats. Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC) also had 10 seats and was accompanied by another pro-independence party Solidaritat per la Independència (SI) with 4 seats. The list of parties with parliamentary representation was closed by Ciutadans-Partido de la Ciudadanía (C’s) who had three seats.
The 2012 elections to the Parliament of Catalonia would shake things up even more but it is a good idea to take a look at each party in turn as they came out of the starting blocks.
Convergència i Unió (CiU)
Convergència i Unió were the traditional conservative Catalanist party, who had been led by Jordi Pujol and, with Pujol as President from 1980 to 2003, had controlled the Generalitat for 23 years. Artur Mas had taken over as party leader and candidate for President of the Generalitat in 2003 and had won most seats in both 2003 and 2006 elections but, without an absolute majority or an obvious coalition partner, had been unable to form a government.
The 2010 elections had been third time lucky and an important vindication for Artur Mas as party leader. Absolute majorities are rare in Catalan politics so 62 seats out of 135 was an excellent result and CiU were able to govern in relative comfort. This meant that calling early elections in order to respond to the Catalan independence movement might jeopardise their position and so didn’t meet with approval from all sections of the federation.
Something I had only been vaguely aware of prior to these elections was that CiU was a federation of two parties, Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya (CDC), founded in 1974 by Jordi Pujol and now led by Artur Mas, and Unió Democràtica de Catalunya (UDC), founded as Catalanist Christian Democrat party in 1931 and currently led by Josep Antoni Duran i Lleida.
Significantly more conservative, Unió are affiliated to the European People’s Party whereas Convergència are members of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe Party. Furthermore, whilst Convergència are clearly in favour of Catalan independence, particularly since Artur Mas and his group gained control of the party in 2003, Unió are more reticent on the subject of secession from Spain.
This is particularly clear in the case of Unió leader Josep Antoni Duran i Lleida, who in 2002 was also tipped to named CiU candidate for President of the Generalitat, before Pujol finally named Artur Mas as his successor, so there are not only ideological differences but also personal rivalries between the two men. The issue of independence also meant that any future CiU wouldn’t be able to count on the support of the Partido Popular, who had voted alongside them on a number of occasions in the previous legislature.
CiU’s election slogan was “La Voluntad de un Poble” – “The Will of a People”.
Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya (PSC-PSOE)
Since the return of democracy, PSC had traditionally been the main opposition party to CiU in the Parliament of Catalonia and whilst the conservative nationalists had controlled the Generalitat, PSC had run Barcelona City Council or Ajuntament until 2011. However, in 2003 former socialist Mayor of Barcelona, Pasqual Maragall, became President of the Generalitat, much to Artur Mas’s chagrin, as a result of a three-way coalition with ERC and ICV known as the Tripartit.
In 2006, the PSC candidate José Montilla had once again become President through a second Tripartit coalition but by 2010, the unpopularity of the Tripartit governments had taken its toll, and the PSC under Montilla only won 28 seats. The poor result led to Montilla renouncing his seat in the Parliament of Catalonia and his place as leader of the opposition was taken by Joaquim Nadal whilst the position of First Secretary of the PSC was occupied by Mayor of Terrassa Pere Navarro following the Spanish General Elections of November 2011.
The Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya is a separate party federated to the Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) at national level and one of its successes over the years has been its combination of Catalanism and socialism. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, its leadership had been mainly middle-class Catalan intellectuals. Pasqual Maragall, for example, was grandson of the poet Joan Maragall, who amongst other things was responsible for the lyrics to one of the Catalan national anthems El Cant de la Senyera. However, the affiliation to PSOE meant that most of PSC’s voters came from Barcelona’s mainly Spanish-speaking industrial belt and this was also reflected in its membership.
First under José Montilla, the Spanish-speaking PSOE wing of the party began to gain more control. When Pere Navarro became First Secretary one of the first things he did was to remove Catalanists from key positions and PSC voted against the fiscal pact in July 2012. This caused a rift in the party and whilst many Catalanist members had attended the Diada demonstration, the official PSC line was that the demonstrators weren’t in fact calling for independence but rather expressing discontent at the economic crisis and cuts imposed by the CiU and Partido Popular governments in Catalonia and Madrid.
The obvious success of the Diada made Navarro change his tune and whilst the Madrid-based PSOE leadership continued viewing the Catalan independence movement in social terms, PSC began calling for a federal solution to the Catalan problem. This clearly improvised idea would involved changes to the Spanish constitution that would require a two-thirds majority in Congress and hence the support of both PSOE and Partido Popular but despite its impracticability, Navarro would defend federalism as the so-called Third Way.
PSC’s election slogan was “L’Alternativa Sensata” – “The Sensible Alternative”.
Partido Popular de Catalunya (PPC)
Unlike PSC, the Partido Popular de Catalunya is not an independent party but simply a delegation of the Spanish Partido Popular. Consequently, it suffers no identity problems and follows the national party line at all times.
Given the Partido Popular’s obvious anti-Catalanism, its appeal is to right-wing anti-Catalans living in Catalonia and has rarely captured much more than 10% of the vote. Under leader Alicia Sánchez-Camacho, the PPC had given a strong show in 2010 and had won 18 seats with a vote of 12.4%.
On the independence question, the Partido Popular’s position was clear. It was and is against independence, against a referendum, against the fiscal pact and is actually in favour of a reduction of Catalonia’s autonomy and would like many of the Generalitat’s competences recentralised to Madrid.
Partido Popular’s election slogan was “Catalunya sí, España también” – “Catalonia yes, Spain too”.
Iniciativa per Catalunya Verds – Esquerra Unida i Alternativa (ICV-EUiA)
ICV-EUiA is a coalition of various left-wing parties that have come into existence since the collapse of communism in Spain in the 1980s and is loosely associated with the also former communist Izquierda Unida at a national level.
Iniciativa per Catalunya formed out of various communist parties in 1987 and first formed a coalition with Els Verds, the Catalan Green party in 1995. As the coalition became more established, non-Green left-wingers broke away to form Esquerra Unida i Alternativa in 1998 but ICV and EUiA have formed a solid coalition since 2003.
Although there are many Catalanists amongst its ranks, given its left-wing stance, ICV-EUiA is fired by an almost maniacal dislike of Convergència i Unió in general and Jordi Pujol and Artur Mas, in particular, which made collaboration difficult.
Broadly speaking, the ICV-EUiA standpoint was that Catalans should be allowed to vote on independence but they favoured increased autonomy or some kind of unspecified constitutional change rather than complete independence from Spain.
ICV-EUiA’s election slogan was “I Tant Si Podem” – “Of Course We Can”.
Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC)
Founded in 1931 as a result of a merger of various left-wing Catalanist parties, Esquerra Presidents of the Generalitat, Francesc Macià and Lluís Companys, proclaimed the Republic of Catalonia in 1931 and 1934 respectively. Esquerra Republicana means Republican Left and, despite a significant drop in popularity in the 1980s, ERC are the only major political party to have consistently campaigned in favour of independence for Catalonia since the return of democracy.
Being part of the unpopular Tripartit governments had led to another drop in popularity in 2010. As both the pacts of 2003 and 2006 had led to Artur Mas not becoming President of the Generalitat on two occasions relations between CiU and ERC were particularly tense. Similarly, as the traditional pro-independence party Esquerra tended to treat CiU as newcomers, much to the irritation of the new Convergència leadership.
Under new leader Oriol Junqueras, chosen just prior to the Spanish General Elections of November 2011, many of the personal rivalries with CiU were no longer so present but the two parties would be competing directly for the pro-independence vote.
ERC’s election slogan was “Un Nou País Per A Tothom” – “A New Country For Everyone”.
Solidaritat Catalana per la Independència (SI)
Solidaritat Catalana per la Independència were a coalition, which took their name from the historic Catalanist coalition Solidaritat Catalana that had won the elections in 1907. As the name suggested their aim was simply to achieve independence for Catalonia and their best-known deputy had been former president of FC Barcelona, Joan Laporta.
At the time of the 2012 election, Laporta had split from the group and SI was led by Alfred López-Tena.
SI’s election slogan was “Som garantia d’independència” – “We are a guarantee for independence”.
Ciutadans-Partido de la Ciudadanía (C’s)
The Ciutadans political party originally grew out of a social movement of the same name opposed to what it calls Catalan nationalism and initially campaigned for more use of Castilian Spanish in schools and against the increased autonomy that the new Estatut would have given Catalonia.
The party’s position was totally against independence and in 2012 they were led by the dynamic Albert Rivera and the slightly spooky Jordi Cañas. Interestingly, Albert Rivera was often compared to another figure from early 20th century Catalan politics, Alexandre Lerroux, who had led the often violently pro-Spanish Partido Republicano Radical against Solidaritat Catalana in the 1907 elections.
C’s election slogan was “Mejor Unidos” – “Better Together”.
Candidatura d’Unitat Popular (CUP)
Little was known by the general public about the radically left-wing and Catalanist CUP at the time of the 2012 elections. They had been involved in municipal politics for a couple of decades but were mainly associated at the time with civil protest movements such as the Indignats.
As this was the first time CUP had stood for the Parliament of Catalonia, they had no deputies in parliament and consequently no allotted television time in debates. However, it was very clear that they were mobilising large numbers of disaffected youth in Barcelona, in particular.
CUP’s election slogan was “Ès l’hora d’un poble” – “It’s the time for a people”.
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January 17, 2015
Artur Mas and the Fiscal Pact Meeting with Rajoy
Chapter 4 gives the background to the fiscal pact and the incredible importance of Artur Mas’s meeting with Mariano Rajoy on September 20th 2012. Still not decided on the title – Catalan Independence: The President and the Process sounds nice today!
Fiscal Pact
It is worth going back and looking at the idea behind the fiscal pact and Catalonia’s tax deficit. It had been one of the central points behind the drafting of the new Catalan Statute of Autonomy between 2003 and 2006 and is a long-standing Catalan complaint. In fact, the idea of Castile overtaxing Catalonia in order to invest in its own projects goes back at least to the Union of Arms of 1626, in which Count-Duke Olivares imposed quotas on the Principality in order to finance the Castilian army during the Thirty Years War.
The problem continued with the imposition of the cadastre tax on the old Crown of Aragon, but not on the Crown of Castile, after Catalonia was annexed by Felipe V in 1714 and there were continual complaints of overtaxation throughout the 19th century when Catalonia became an industrialised economy whilst the rest of Spain remained agricultural. Under Franco, Catalonia was once again Spain’s economic motor but, being populated by what the regime called red-separatists, the region saw few benefits.
In the transition to democracy after Franco’s death, it was hoped that Catalonia would gain a more equitable tax status but in a process that became known as café para todos or coffee for everybody, its claims were neatly sidestepped. Interestingly, this didn’t happen to the Basque Country and Navarre, who as they had received special treatment under the dictatorship were able to negotiate similar advantages under the new democratic regime.
The system known as the economic concert allowed the Autonomous Governments of the Basque Country and Navarre to collect their own taxes and then pay central government for services such as defence, foreign policy and the monarchy as well as a quota to the interterritorial solidarity fund, which gives aid to Spain’s poorer regions.
For a number of reasons, Catalonia wasn’t able to negotiate these conditions when its original Statute of Autonomy was drafted in 1979, which means that central government collects taxes and then returns money to the Generalitat for health, education and social services amongst other things and invests in roads, railways, airports and other infrastructures through the appropriate ministry. This would be fine if the criteria used to redistribute finances followed any kind of logic. Unfortunately, in Spain they don’t.
Catalonia isn’t the only Autonomous Community to be unfairly treated but rough calculations estimate that whilst Catalonia is home to 16% of the Spanish population and generates 19% of its GDP and 25% of its exports, it only receives 11% of resources invested by central government. Studies by Catalan academics suggest that for the last 30 years, Catalonia has suffered a tax deficit, which is the difference between what it pays to central government and what it gets back, of around 8% of its GDP. In 2013, the Generalitat calculated that the tax deficit stood at €16 billion making Catalonia one of the most heavily taxed regions in Spain.
This would be understandable if the Spanish finance system were equitable. However, per capita, Catalans are the third of the seventeen autonomous communities in the ranking of tax payment but fifteenth in terms of investment. This is why Catalonia is the part of Spain where there are most privately financed toll motorways and where unlike some other regions, Catalan parents have to pay for their children’s school books.
In the financial section of the new Catalan Statute of Autonomy, which was approved by referendum in Catalonia in 2006, one of the clauses specified that Catalonia’s position in the ranking of tax payers had to be equal to its position in investment. Basically, it stated that Catalans couldn’t be made poorer in comparison with other regions as a result of central government tax policy. However, in its ruling of 2010, the Spanish Constitutional Court, whilst not considering the article unconstitutional, ruled that it was not legally binding so central government could carry on as it always had done.
Not surprisingly, in the elections to the Parliament of Catalonia in November 2010, just over 4 months after the Constitutional Court ruling, Artur Mas and CiU centred their campaign around solving Catalonia’s tax deficit. Rather than calling this the economic concert, to distinguish it from the Basque Country and Navarre, it was called the fiscal pact but effectively it amounted to the same thing. Catalonia would be responsible for collecting its own taxes and would need to create a Catalan Treasury in order to do so.
Once invested as President of the Generalitat, Artur Mas set up a parliamentary commission to look into the problem, which concluded that the historic fiscal deficit “has weakened the economic competiveness and welfare in Catalonia”. It also pointed out that the current model didn’t give “full satisfaction to Catalonia’s financial needs within the common system”.
The text also emphasised that “if Catalonia already had a fiscal pact, the Generalitat wouldn’t have to make cuts or if so very much smaller ones”. The Generalitat already knew that it would be obliged to reduce the public deficit by 2.9% in 2011 and 2012 in order to achieve the objective of 1.3% set by the state, a percentage that was obviously well below Catalonia’s structural fiscal deficit of 8%.
The proposal made it clear that the new financing system would be “based on the economic concert”, which would mean abandoning the common system in favour of a bilateral relationship between the Generalitat and the State. The text made continual references to the Basque and Navarran systems, even though the Catalan government preferred the term fiscal pact rather than economic concert. However, there was very little difference between the two systems in practical terms.
The commission also emphasised that it would not be necessary to modify the Constitution or the Estatut to achieve this. Reforming the Ley Orgánica de Financiación de las Comunidades Autonómicas (LOFCA) and including an exception to the common system, similar to the Basque Country and Navarre, would be sufficient.
This reform would have to be accompanied by a new law to regulate the details of the new Catalan model. Starting from the basis of the Basque law, this would include a fiscal chapter regulating the secession of all taxes paid in Catalonia to the Generalitat and the creation of an Agència Tributària Catalana or Catalan Treasury to collect, manage and pay all taxes and also to fulfil inspection functions. Furthermore, Catalan Parliament would have the capacity to make taxation laws in Catalonia. In effect, they were proposing total tax autonomy for Catalonia and Artur Mas would later use the expression fiscal sovereignty to refer to this. The commission also proposed a system of bilateral coordination in order to establish the mechanisms to guide the negotiation between the Generalitat and the State as well as periodical reviews of the tax model.
A financial chapter would fix how much Catalonia would have to pay in return for services provided by the State and its contributions to so-called interterritorial solidarity. Catalonia’s solidarity quota would be “similar” to the Basque and Navarran agreements “in terms of resources per inhabitant” but shouldn’t mean that Catalonia lose positions in the ranking of communities in income per capita as a result. The fiscal deficit should never exceed that of other EU regions with characteristics and GDP similar to Catalonia. Furthermore, the Generalitat wants to insure that the solidarity quota is destined to ends which “insures the development of the territories that receive the aid”.
The commission’s conclusions were debated in the Catalan Parliament in July 2012 and were passed by a clear majority with votes in favour from CiU, ERC and ICV. PSC, PP and C’s all voted against but the socialists and the Partido Popular said they would be willing to negotiate in the future. However, during the electoral campaign to the Spanish Parliament in November 2011, the then aspiring Partido Popular candidate to the presidency, Mariano Rajoy repeated various times that he didn’t know what the fiscal pact was and had no knowledge of its content. On a number of occasions, he referred to it as “literature”.
Whilst fully aware that Artur Mas was unlikely to receive an affirmative answer from Rajoy, expectations were high on the evening before their meeting in Madrid on September 20th, just nine days after the historic Diada demonstration. The press was there to photograph his departure on the high-speed AVE train from Lleida. Everyone knew that a positive response from the Spanish President would quickly reduce tensions and recreate an atmosphere of collaboraton between the Generalitat and central government.
The headline in the newspaper the following day read “New Era. Rajoy gives a categorical ‘No’ to the fiscal pact because it’s not consistent with the constitution”. Artur Mas said that “A historic opportunity for understanding had been lost” and that he was “sad and disappointed” that after two hours Rajoy had left Catalonia without a shred of hope on the fiscal pact. “Catalonia cannot give up on its future” nor “remain subjugated” so “all possibilities are open”.
A few hours later thousands of Catalans welcomed Artur Mas in Plaça de Sant Jaume as if he had returned home victorious from a battle. Cries of “Independence” and “Mas, be valiant! Catalonia, independent!” Leaders of the civil organisations Institut d’Estudis Catalans, Òmnium Cultural and Assemblea Nacional Catalana were present, and President came down the square, where he received an avalanche of congratulations for the courage with which he had defended his position. Mas did little more than wave and shake hands and at one point he sang along with the Catalan anthem Els Segadors.
“Today we still have nothing to celebrate,” he said, fully aware of the difficult road ahead.
***
This is Chapter Four of my Artur Mas/Catalan Independence Book Project
Click Here To Read The Rest Of The Chapters Written So Far
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January 15, 2015
Artur Mas Book Project
I will be posting draft chapters to the Artur Mas Book as they are written just as I did with Catalonia Is Not Spain. I find it’s a good way of keeping myself motivated and also of getting some early feedback. Please bear in mind that these are draft chapters and are likely to change a lot before they are finally published.
The basic idea behind the book is to cover the Catalan Independence Process from September 11th 2012 to the Mas-Junqueras agreement on January 14th 2015, which announced elections for September. It’s certainly not a biography but rather an account of the process with Artur Mas as the central character because, as I am writing in English, the President is the visible face as far as foreign media are concerned.
Photo Credit: “Míting Manresa. Tremosa, Mas, Trias i Gambús” by Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya – Míting Manresa. Tremosa, Mas, Trias i Gambús. Licensed under CC BY 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
Anyway here are the chapters written so far … comments and criticism gladly accepted!
Diada 2012
Political Career So Far
Two Reactions To 11S
Fiscal Pact
Early Elections Announced
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What Was The Fiscal Pact?
As Catalonia moves forward with its independence process, the so-called structures of state involved in the original fiscal pact once again take on importance. This Vanguardia article from November 2011 explains what the fiscal pact was and how the plan was (and still is) to create a Catalan Treasury in order to collect taxes. It’s worth remembering that had Mariano Rajoy agreed to these demands in his meeting with Artur Mas on September 20th 2012, the whole Catalan independence movement might well have been defused before it started. However, as usual, Rajoy refused to listen!
Here’s the link to the article in Spanish
http://www.lavanguardia.com/politica/20111128/54238620892/que-es-el-pacto-fiscal.html
What Is The Fiscal Pact?
During the last electoral campaign, the then aspiring candidate to the presidency, Mariano Rajoy repeated various times that he didn’t know what the fiscal pact was and had no knowledge of its content and called it “literature”. However, the investigation commission on the new finance commission based on the economic concert presented very clear conclusions on the intentions of the Catalan Parliament and Government before the election campaign. The conclusions were passed by CiU, ERC and ICV and rejected by PSC, PP and C’s. However, the socialists and the Partido Popular said they were willing to negotiate.
End the Fiscal Deficit that the current system won’t alleviate
In the first points of the text passed by the commission, the parliamentary groups stress the need for a new model that ends the historic fiscal deficit that “has weakened the economic competitiveness and welfare in Catalonia”. Furthermore, it points out the insufficiency of the current model passed in 2009 after the passing of the Estatut because it doesn’t give “full satisfaction to Catalonia’s financial needs within the common system”
Consequently, the current system, despite supposing a quantitative increase in resources, is more confusing and continues to punish the communities that provide more resources per capita, meaning that Catalonia is the third community in taxation but the fifteenth in resources. Furthermore, the increased spending needs of the communities and the crisis have made the situation even worse. It concludes that Catalonia’s deficit has hardly been reduced under the new system.
The text stresses that “if Catalonia already had a fiscal pact, the Generalitat wouldn’t have to make cuts or if so very much smaller ones”. This statement is based on the fact that the government is obliged to reduce the public deficit by 2.9% in 2011 and 2012 in order to achieve the objective of 1.3% set by the state, a percentage that is well below Catalonia’s structural fiscal deficit which goes up to 8% of the Catalan GDP.
The Basque Concert, the reference
The Catalan Parliament’s proposal doesn’t hide the fact that it wants a new financing system “based on the economic concert”, which means abandoning the common system in favour of a bilateral relationship between the Generalitat and the State. In fact, the text makes continual references to the Basque and Navarran systems even though the Catalan government and has preferred to talk of fiscal pact rather than economic concert. However, in general, there’s very little difference.
The commission also emphasises that it is not necessary to modify the Constitution or the Estatut to achieve this. Reforming the Ley Orgánica de Financiación de las Comunidades Autonómicas (LOFCA) and include an exception to the common system, similar to the Basque Country and Navarre.
This reform would have to be accompanied by a new law to regulate the details of the new Catalan model. Starting from the basis of the Basque law, this would be based on two principles.
A fiscal chapter that regulates the secession of all taxes paid in Catalonia to the Generalitat and the consequent creation of the Agencia Tributaria Catalan or the Catalan Treasury, which collects, manages and pays all taxes and also fulfils inspection functions. Furthermore, Catalan Parliament would have the capacity to make taxation laws in Catalonia. In effect, we’re talking about total fiscal autonomy for Catalonia.
A financial chapter, which would fix how much Catalonia would have to pay in return for services provided by the State and the so-called interterritorial solidarity.
A chapter on bilateral coordination in order to establish the mechanisms to guide the negotiation between the Generalitat and the State as well as periodical reviews of the model. This would be the Comisión Mixta de Asuntos Económicos y Fiscales Estado-Generalitat or Mixed Commission of Economic and Financial Affairs State-Generalitat.
Criteria to Calculate the Solidarity Quota
As the document clearly states, the benefits of the new model will be based on criteria to calculate Catalonia’s solidarity quota towards the State. However, this is the least defined point. In contrast to the Basque quota, which sets a percentage according to criteria of population and other compensation mechanisms, as well as periodical reviews, the conclusions of the commission only set general principles. However, the result must be “similar” to the Basque and Navarran agreements “in terms of resources per inhabitant”.
The Parliament does establish that this quota shouldn’t mean that Catalonia lose positions in the ranking of communities in income per capita as a result and that the fiscal deficit should never exceed that of other EU regions with characteristics and GDP similar to Catalonia. Furthermore, the Generalitat wants to ensure that the solidarity quota is destined to ends which “insures the development of the territories that receive the aid”.
Promote a Popular Consultation
The Generalitat, through Parliament’s conclusions, also reserves the right to develop a law of popular consultations to promote a non-binding consultation on the need for a fiscal pact.
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Catalan Independence Websites in English
For reference purposes, here’s a list of some of the main Catalan Independence Websites explaining the process in English. Many are run by official organisations and are consequently particularly useful for any reader who is interested in the progress of the projected Catalan state but doesn’t have a full command of Catalan or Spanish.
* Please contact me if you think there is a Catalan Independence Website that I should have included but haven’t and if you have a blog on Catalan independence or a relevant subject, feel free to a link in the comments below.
Catalan Assembly
CatalanAssembly.org is the English language version of the Assemblea Nacional Catalana (ANC) or Catalan National Assembly, one of the main two civil groups behind the independence process along with Omnium Cultural. This is the best place to find out about forthcoming rallies and demonstrations.
Catalonia Votes
CataloniaVotes.eu is run by the Public Diplomacy Council of Catalonia or DIPLOCAT, which is co-funded by Catalan government and private institutions, and aims to foment dialogue between Catalonia and the rest of the world. The aim of this English language website is specifically to inform on why Catalans want to vote and the steps that are being taken to do so.
Vilaweb in English
Vilaweb is an online news portal that covers the independence process very closely and also includes opinion articles and interviews with key figures. The English version has translations of the most important and relevant articles and is the best way to keep up with what’s happening on a day-to-day basis.
Wilson Iniative
The Wilson Initiative or Col.lectiu Wilson are a group of Catalan academics, who lecture in mainly economics or political science at American universities, and are named after the post-WWI US president Woodrow Wilson. They don’t produce much material but the articles they do write are of extremely high quality and academic rigour.
Col.lectiu Emma
Col.lectiu Emma is a group of Catalans and non-Catalans, who have made it their job to track down news items in the international press in English, German, French and Italian and other languages. If you click on the English tab, you get a list of articles that have recently been published in the English-speaking press.
Help Catalonia
HelpCatalonia is a group of individuals whose aim is to spread the word on the situation in Catalonia, more specifically as they say themselves ‘about the silent war that the Spanish state is waging against this millenary people’ in order to raise awareness in the international. The site features articles on Catalan culture, language and news as well as the independence process and also has editions in French, Italian, German and Spanish.
Reagrupament International
Reagrupament Independentista is a politically-motivated association committed to Catalan independence and promoting civil society initiatives to obtain it. The International website in English includes a number of documents explaining the process along with sections on Catalonia, parallel processes in other countries and the association. It also republishes articles from high profile pro-independence bloggers in English.
Visit International.Reagrupament.cat
El Clauer in English
Subtitled ‘Keys on the Independence of Catalonia’, El Clauer actually means keyring in English and the site is organised like a Q and A FAQ based around key topics such as Government Institutions, Welfare State, Relations with Spain etc. This is a really great site that will answer any questions about how Catalonia will be organised after it becomes an independent state.
Catalan International View
Catalan International View is not specifically dedicated to the independence process but is rather an online and downloadable magazine featuring articles on international politics from a Catalan point of view. The contributors comprise an impressive list of journalists, many of whom have worked as foreign correspondents for the Catalan and Spanish press, and academics, who have experience of teaching at English-speaking universities.
Visit Catalan International View
Catalan News Monitor
Catalan News Monitor is a news curation site collecting articles mainly in English and posting an intro and photo with a link to the main article. The site is run by Plataforma pel Dret de Decidir [Platform for the Right to Decide], a Catalan umbrella organisation made up of more than 700 associations and individuals from the civil society, representing a wide and diverse social movement from across the Catalan speaking countries, which aspires to full independence.
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