Catalonian leader Josep Antoni Durán i Lleida stated yesterday during a meeting organized by elEconomista and Ernst & Young that in order for the national and Catalonian governments to reach an understanding, they need to engage in talks rather than resort to the Constitution. The president of the Convergence and Union (CiU) and also the party's spokesman in Congress stood strongly by an unbalanced budget, recognized Catalonia's unique position and that all regional governments cannot get the same treatment.
The café para todos formula, a relic from the post-Franco transition to democracy that created homogenous levels of decentralization across Spanish governments, has started to show its negative repurcussions over time. Durán said, "Those who want less autonomy can't be treated the same as those who are demanding more." The national government handed regional governments the responsibility for running Healthcare and Education in 2001, and those roles have become a heavy burden. Catalonia needs to figure where and how it wants to fit in the governing of Spain, and this reconciliation will take a great amount of effort and willingness to form agreements on both sides.
The Unió president, when in front of spokespeople from the Economic Ministry and congressmen from the Peoples' Party and the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party who attended the event, proposed a core tax reform designed to show down the widening gap between the rich and the poor and to provide small- and medium-sized businesses (known as PYMES in Spain) to get the resources they need to finance their businesses.
Just under a year ago, elEconomista was asking Rajoy to hold talks in order to avoid a conflict with Catalonia. But he didn't do that. Soon after, Arturu Mas launched a campaign for Catalonian nationalism.
Rajoy has a chance to take advantage of the olive branch that Durán has extended and to ease the debt burden for Catalonia, and other regional governments who are in a similar situation, without snubbing the regions who have met their debt obligations. Also, we need talks that will reform the structure of Spain's regional governments becuase the café para todos model is not working.
