New court ruling means €800m loss for Catalan government

In Madrid today Catalonia’s vice president and Finance minister Oriol Junqueras is due to meet Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría, the vice president of the Spanish government. Junqueras and Sáenz will follow in the footsteps of Catalan president Puigdemont and his Spanish counterpart, whose meeting last week signalled the start of a renewed dialogue between Barcelona and Madrid.

However, a quick reality check will show that the thawing of relations between the two governments is far from complete because the Spanish executive branch keeps filing legal complaints with the Constitutional Court (TC) against Catalan laws —another three only last Friday— and the Court keeps ruling against Catalonia’s interests, particularly when it comes to the Generalitat’s own funding sources.

Only yesterday the TC ruled that a Catalan tax on nuclear power stations —which the government hoped would raise €43m— is illegal. The reasoning is always the same: only Spain’s central government (as opposed to a regional administration such as Catalonia’s Generalitat) may pass legislation on such matters. If we add up all the revenue that the TC has prevented the Generalitat from receiving (such as the tax on bank deposits and the one euro charge on medical prescriptions) the sum amounts to €807m, precisely when Spanish Finance minister Montoro is urging Junqueras to cut back a further €1bn this year. When you look at the bigger picture, you can see that Madrid unilaterally sets Catalonia’s spending cap while, at the same time, it won’t allow the Catalan government to increase its revenue. The end result is but one: a financial chokehold on Catalonia. Given the circumstances, it is no wonder that minister Junqueras is not feeling very hopeful about today’s meeting in Madrid.

In addition, yesterday the PP showed its poor democratic credentials by using the institutions for their own partisan ends, once again. Following a meeting with Sáenz de Santamaría, the PP leader in Catalonia, Xavier García Albiol, announced that both governments had reached a bare-bones agreement that will avert a legal appeal against five issues which the Generalitat merely regards as technical matters but which Albiol used to sing the praises of the “sympathetic” Spanish government. Just who is Mr Albiol to publicly announce an agreement that concerns the two governments? Is this how they expect to win back the trust of the public?