‘Chronicle of a premeditated offense’: Catalonia issues list of grievances | News from Catalonia - VilaWeb
‘Chronicle of a premeditated offense’: Catalonia issues list of grievances
The Catalan government accuses Spain of stifling self-rule in Catalonia and compromising the welfare of citizens
Among other things, the document denounces what it
describes as Spain’s unwillingness to maintain a dialogue with Catalonia
and its attack on the Catalan public school system. It also lambasts
Spain’s 71% cuts to investment in Catalonia between 2009 and 2014, and
its cuts to entitlement programs such as the carers’ allowance.
The Minister for the Presidency, Francesc Homs, has requested to lay the report before parliament.
The Catalan government commissioned the document at its 3
March meeting, in response to the steady trickle of moves on the part of
the Spanish government seeking to curtail Catalonia’s autonomy,
including the challenging of several Catalan laws before Spanish courts.
The one-hundred-page long paper analyses what it describes
as the recentralization of powers that Spain has carried out in the
economic and legal arena.
The document also draws attention to the sharp contrast
between Spain’s ‘inaction’ when it comes to negotiating with Catalonia
(jurisdiction transfers, fiscal pact, right to decide) or to carrying
out legal sentences adverse to its interests, and its ‘hyperactivity’
when it comes to recentralizing power and curtailing Catalan self-rule
in all avenues of action—whether it is social, economic, or
institutional policy.
The paper also discusses Spain’s unwillingness to dialogue
despite the Catalan government’s requests to seek a negotiated and
mutually agreed-upon solution that would meet the wish of an ample
majority of the Catalan population to decide the nation’s political
future.
