28.03.2014 - 13:01
ARA newspaper, the Catalan News Agency, and El Mundo newspaper are all reporting that “PP sources” [Partido Popular] say that the Spanish president, Mariano Rajoy, will propose an improvement to Catalan financing. Specifically, the reports are that he “will leave a door open” to an improvement in Catalan government financing on April 8 when the Spanish Congress rejects giving the necessary powers to the Catalan government in order to hold referendums. Sources from the PP told CNA that the definite No to a possibility of holding a referendum must be accompanied with an escape route in order to “exit this climate of craziness”. The Catalan Government considers it speculation and says that if such offers were to be specified in a concrete propsal, they would have to be submitted to a vote.
The Councilor of the Executive, Francesc Homs, told RAC-1, “This is a strategy that is being drawn from a mistaken premise, which is not understanding what is being suggested democratically in Catalonia.”
This information arrives as the Finance Minister must outline a reform of the financing model, which must be approved before 2015 in the Council of Fiscal and Financial Policy. Sources from the PP signal that Rajoy’s team’s desire is to rekindle the relationship with CiU, “which has never been bad” and which they’d like to revive.
“It’s time to start to appease” the political climate because keeping the tension high doesn’t make any sense, say these sources. This is a reference to the ruling from the Constitutional Court on the Catalan Parliament’s Declaration of Sovereignty, which closes the door to the definition of Catalonia as a sovereign entity, but signals a way toward negotiation between the two governments in order to close political divisions.
The Spanish executive thinks that the April 8th session can make the sovereigntist parties and the Catalan government rethink their roadmap. It will be a long debate, lasting four or five hours, in which it’s not clear if Mariano Rajoy will speak; it is known that Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba (leader of the Spanish Socialists) will indeed intervene. In this debate, the representatives of the Catalan Parliament will have double the regular amount of time to present their proposed laws from the autonomous chambers, that is, ten minutes each.
