Benvolguts,
Avui rebem a través de Vilaweb un article, que
explica i comenta un altre extraordinari article d’ahir del Wall Street Journal.
Diuen tot el que ja sabem, però ho diuen en anglès en una publicació d’extraordinària
difusió. Ens cal sortir a l’exterior a explicar el nostre cas. Ja és hora que
els membres del govern surtin a explicar a l’estranger quin és el nostre (i els
seu?) problema... Per què no ho fan cada dia, i amb convenciment? Però per fer
això cal que ells estiguin convençuts i això no és gens clar:
El Wall Street Journal acusa Rajoy d'asfixiar
Catalunya
El
diari destaca l'insòlit dèficit fiscal que pateixen Catalunya i les Illes i el
centralisme espanyol
El
diari The Wall Street Journal ha publicat avui un
article en què acusa el govern de Mariano Rajoy
d'asfixiar les comunitat autònomes i d'atribuir-los un dèficit més
gran per netejar el dèficit estatal; remarca la recentralització que fa l'executiu espanyol i el
malbaratament de diners en algunes inversions. I
també destaca l'insòlit dèficit fiscal que pateix Catalunya, i les Illes
Balears, 'sense comparació en cap lloc d'Europa ni d'Amèrica del Nord'.
L'article
se centra en el cas català, amb declaracions del conseller Andreu Mas-Colell i
de l'economista Germà Bel.
El periodista Raymond Zhong, autor de l'article, diu: 'Cada any des del 1986
una mitjana del 9% del PIB català se'n va de Catalunya per ser redistribuïda o
perquè se'l gasti Madrid. Només les Illes Balears renuncien a una part més gran
de la producció anual. En cap altre lloc d'Europa o d'Amèrica del Nord hi ha
unes transferències d'aquesta magnitud'. I recorda que el
govern espanyol pot fer que el seu dèficit sembli menor, i el dels governs
autonòmics, més gran, mantenint la gestió dels ingressos.
'Madrid inflama
l'independentisme'
A més,
afegeix: 'Les amenaces de Madrid de recentralitzar semblen un joc polític que
distreu de les reformes que en realitat podrien ajudar els governs regionals a
reduir els respectius dèficits. El senyor Mas-Colell diu que li toca a Madrid, per exemple, de
fer els canvis de regulació que permetin als hospitals de cobrar per les
receptes, els menjars i les pernoctacions, tal com el seu govern prova de fer',
diu el periodista.
El diari destaca les retallades que ja ha fet el govern català, i el
fet que la Generalitat hagi retallat el sou dels funcionaris, i que l'estat
espanyol no hi hagi fet.
'És una mica desconcertant que Madrid inflami el sentiment independentista a
Catalunya en un moment de crisi nacional', observa el rotatiu.
Article
(és en anglès, si apareix una traducció ja la posaré
al Bloc):
Why Spain Won't Reform
Catalans know first-hand that in Spain, all roads—and high-speed
rail—run through Madrid.
Barcelona
Is Spain next to go on the
Brussels dole? Not if the assurances coming out of Spanish officials lately are
to be believed. Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy,
addressing reporters in Poland this month: "Spain will not be rescued. The
alarm is unjustified. . . . It's not possible to rescue Spain. There's no
intention of it, and we don't need it."
Mr. Rajoy, at a conference of his
People's Party in Madrid: "[Investors] lend to you if they are confident you will pay it back. . . . There are countries near to us that couldn't, and they are in the situation
everyone knows about. This is not the case for Spain."
Economy Minister Luis de Guindos,
on the possibility of a Spanish bank rescue: "The government won't create
anything, neither a good bank nor a bad bank, and there won't even be the
smallest bit of public money available."
The good news is that markets
don't seem to be buying Madrid's sanguinity. That's also, of course, the bad
news.
***
Spain's crisis isn't of a piece with Greece's or
Portugal's, and it won't be resolved in the same way. The Spanish economy is
much larger, but its ailments are not principally fiscal. Public debt was 65.8%
of GDP at the end of last year. Indebtedness actually fell between 1996 and
2007 before climbing again during the financial crisis.
Rather than fixating on deficit targets, official
Europe should be watching the danger lurking in Spanish banks. Like the Irish, Spaniards
overinvested in property during the easy-money days, and banks' losses on
residential mortgage-backed securities will probably trigger some form of
public support as the housing bubble deflates further. Irish property values
halved between peak and trough, whereas Spanish real-estate prices have so far
only fallen about a quarter from their 2007 highs.
Still, the billion-euro issues are growth and
structural reform. On these, too, Mr. Rajoy has assured and reassured markets
and policy makers of his resolve. But here in Catalonia, the autonomous region of Spain
whose capital is Barcelona, few are counting on Madrid to do the right thing.
For now, the evidence is on the doubters' side. In
February, the prime minister passed a major law that addressed, among the
Spanish labor market's many malignancies, Spain's menu of around 40 types of
employment contracts. As Mr. de Guindos wrote in a Journal op-ed in January, Madrid's goal is a
system with two contracts: one for full-time workers and another for temporary
labor.
Yet February's reform did not reduce the number of contracts. Instead, it
created a new one, for firms with fewer than 50
employees.
Catalans have additional reasons to question the
Spanish government's capacity for change. Of late Mr. Rajoy has been blaming Spain's regional governments for the
country's deficit overruns, saying that wayward local spending had jeopardized
the entire nation's creditworthiness. Madrid has threatened to intervene in the regional governments' budgets if
they don't tidy their books on their own.
Carlos III put Spain on the road to overinvestment.
But according to Andreu Mas-Colell, Catalonia's
economy minister, the real story is a little different. He explains that with the
exception of the Basque Country, Spain's 17 regions enjoy spending autonomy but
almost no revenue autonomy. It's up to the central government to decide how nationwide revenue gets
distributed between regions, and there's no guarantee that what a region's
citizens pay to Madrid is returned euro-for-euro in funding to that region.
That means the central government can make its own budget shortfalls look
smaller—and the regional governments' look bigger—simply by keeping more of the
revenue pot to itself.
The result? Catalonia is the seat of Spanish industry and one of the most
important industrial districts in Europe, lagging only the likes of Italy's
Lombardy and the German Ruhr in productivity. Yet each year since 1986, an
average of 9% of Catalonia's GDP in net terms has left the region to be
redistributed or spent by Madrid. In Spain, only the Balearic Islands
surrender a larger share of their annual output. Nowhere else in Europe or North
America do intra-national transfers of such size occur as a matter of course.
"In discretionary expenses we feel we have been
historically shortchanged," Mr. Mas-Colell says. "We represent 15% of the population, and we represent close to 18% in terms of GNP. . . . In this year's budget,
the investment in Catalonia is 11% of public investment in Spain."
"There are inefficiencies in the autonomous communities for
sure," he adds. "But not to a larger extent than the inefficiencies
in the central administration. . . . Spain in all its
components has to gain on efficiency, on liberalization, on flexibility."
Seen this way, Madrid's threats to recentralize fiscal policy look like a political play
that distracts from reforms that could actually help the regional governments
close their budget gaps. Mr. Mas-Colell says that it's up
to Madrid, for instance, to make regulatory changes that would enable hospitals
to charge for prescriptions, meals and overnight stays, as his government is
trying to do.
He also notes that Barcelona has cut government employees' wages. Madrid
hasn't.
It's a little bewildering that Madrid would choose to inflame separatist
feeling in Catalonia at a time of national crisis. More than 40% of Catalans now say they'd support seceding from Spain. But Madrid's centuries-long jiu-jitsu with the regions suggests something
about the national character, according to Germà Bel, an economist at the
University of Barcelona. Centralized control, Mr. Bel told me, is in "the genetics of the
Spanish state."
The example Mr. Bel and others like to use is infrastructure investment,
which Spain's leaders since the 17th century have deployed to affirm their rule
and proclaim the Spanish nation. Today Spain, the fifth largest EU member state
by GDP and by population, has more international airports and more miles of
motorways than any other country in Continental Europe. It has more miles of
high-speed rail than any country in the world except China; it also has the
lowest ridership per mile of high-speed rail in the world. More miles of
high-speed rail are currently under construction in Spain than in all other EU
countries combined.
***
Fast trains to nowhere are emblems of government folly the world over. But Spain's centralizing impulse runs deeper than most, Mr. Bel says. Ever since the 18th-century Bourbon kings,
Spain's leaders have sought to make their state in France's image: strongly
unified, with power amassed at the center and all roads (or rails) extending
outward from the capital.
But the Iberian kingdoms' strong cultural and
historical identities meant that yoking them together has created continuous
unease. Spain's rulers made "a bad
copy" of France, said Ferran Requejo, a political scientist at Pompeu
Fabra University, when we met last week.
Even a facsimile shares some characteristics with the
real thing. In Spain, Mr. Bel says, "Any type of economic reforms that
increase flexibility and uncertainty will be heavily resisted."
"This was the case, for instance, in the case of
[February's] labor reform. They didn't significantly change the way in which
collective bargaining is conducted. Firms can decrease wages, but still the
collective bargaining is at the provincial level . . . This is going to be bad
two or three years from now."
Is it unfair to take Madrid's attitude toward the
regions as a weathervane for its ability to undertake structural reforms
generally? Throughout Europe, politicians are discovering the limits to governing from
the center during a crisis. There are rigidities associated
with concentrated authority, but there are also important questions of legitimacy and shared cause.
"The fact is," Mr. Bel says of Catalonia and Spain, "there
is a sense of being different nations." Under strain, the EU is learning
that it, too, is made up of different nations. Brussels could use its own
Catalonian thorn in its side: a reminder that nations are not just vehicles for paying off their
governments' debts.
—Mr. Zhong is an editorial page
writer for The Wall Street Journal Europe.
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1.
Great article, thanks a lot for
it.
For us, the Catalans, it is fresh air and help us to go on.
Every day we are facing Spanish
nationalism attacks, and it seems that nobody realize that Catalans are really
fed up, of this situation. We are reaching the end, because
of, under the actual situation it is not possible, at all, go on.
We need to have the support of
all, EEC and other countries. Spanish government will not allow us to grow ,
they are afraid from us and they are doing all their “best” in order to
suffocate us economic, political and culturally, and they are achieving to do
it.
Just to give you a little example of how Spanish “clever strategy” are using OUR money in order to help Spanish economy, they are investing
in high speed trains to nowhere while all Mediterranean area is not well
connected with Europe, our main market….. Incredible !!!
I, as a lot of Catalan people, was not independence, but after a lot of years of Spanish
suffocation, I really think that it will be the only way to survive.
I will not start to contest all
the opinions here written by the Spanish Nationalist…… it has no sense. I am
sure that most people outside Spain, are clever an open-minded enough , to
judge the situation from themselves.
Visca Catalunya!
2.
Thanks
very much for your article Mr Zhong. Finally someone shed some light into the
truth behind the Spanish State.
Independence for Catalonia is the
only way to acquire the rights that any other european nation has for granted
but Spain insists on denying for us. With Catalonia's independence Europe will
win a solvent member in the southern european area that will dynamize activity
and take the lead towards growth. It will still be generous, but within a
limit.
I regularly write about this topic in http://www.cataloniadirect.info
Joan
A. Forès
Reflexions
