After nearly four months since their last official meeting at Moncloa, Mariano Rajoy and Artur Mas met again yesterday face-to-face to celebrate the opening of the Barcelona-Figueres high speed rail. This railroad infrastructure project was vital for Catalonia, a region that has yet to heal its wounds yet still wishes to express how its politics diverge strongly from the Spanish national government.
As Rajoy extended his hand and offered to collaborate with Catalonia, Mas used an act loaded with conciliation and symbolism to take his nationalist stance again and recall the supposed forgotten investor from Catalonia and the lateness of a project that coincides with the twentieth anniversary of the AVE route to Seville. It was a new display of contempt that reopens the secessionist wound. The Catalonian community will receive 1.112 billion euros in infrastructure development funding this year, which is 2.6 times more than the national average. In the last twelve years it has received 21.716 billion euros.
As if that were not enough, the Catalonian government agreed yesterday to appoint a Finance Minister in order to strengthen its abilities in this realm. To close a dismal year, the Catalonian government said that it is keeping in contact with the EU in order to pressure Rajoy into lowering Catalonia's deficit requirement to 0.7% for 2012. It's clear that Mas is speaking loudly from both sides of his mouth, because he's trying to get funding from Spain while trying to break free at the same time.
