–Ruling Catalonian Party Wants Some Kind Of Referendum On Independence

PARIS (MNI) – The president of Spain’s semi-autonomous region of
Catalonia, Artur Mas, has called an early election for November 25, the
Spanish daily El Pais reported on its website.

A snap regional election was widely reported to be in the works
after a meeting between Mas and Spain’s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy
last week ended in acrimony over a Catalonian demand for fiscal
autonomy. Rajoy rejected Mas’s demand to allow Catalonia to levy its own
taxes.

Fiscal autonomy for Catalonia has been Mas’s leading policy
platform during his two years at the helm of the regional government,
the Generalitat.

Spain’s economic crisis has enflamed separatist sentiment in
Catalonia and a victory by separatist parties in the election could
present Rajoy with a constitutional crisis.

The leading Catalonian party, Convergencia i Unio, which Mas heads,
has communicated its desire to “consult the will of the Catalonian
people” about the possible creation of an independent state, El Pais
reported. It is unclear what form such a consultation would take.

Earlier this month, an estimated 1.5 million protestors gathered in
Barcelona to demand an end to austerity and greater freedom from Madrid.
Some held signs demanding separation from Spain.

Catalonia represents one-fifth of Spain’s economic output and has
long complained that, aside from its cultural differences with the rest
of Spain, it contributes much more to the central government than it
gets back.

Mas’s government recently requested a E5 billion bridge loan from
an E18 billion fund Madrid has established to help the country’s
indebted regions. Catalonia sends 9% of its GDP to the central
government for redistribution to other regions of Spain, and it argues
that is the reason for its current financial predicament.

Catalonia, which has its own language and culture, has long feuded
with Madrid. The dictator Francisco Franco outlawed the Catalonian
language and other expressions of national identity for nearly four
decades following the end of the Spanish Civil War. Many Catalonians
resent Rajoy for his centralizing tendencies and his suspicion of
cultural and linguistic autonomy.

After Franco’s death, Catalonia won a fair degree of autonomy and
the right to use its language in schools and official business. The
Convergencia i Unio party has traditionally favored nationalist
expression within the context of a unified Spain.

The party’s prominent and widely respected former leader, Jordi
Pujol, who headed the Catalonian government from 1980 to 2003, was
renowned as a bastion against Catalonian separatism. But he told the
Financial Times in a recent interview: “We don’t fit anymore inside
Spain.”

–Paris newsroom, +33142715540;; jduffy@marketnews.com

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