Catalan balancing act

The debate that took place in the Catalan regional parliament on Friday has highlighted the ability of the ruling CiU nationalist bloc to hold on to its relative majority by relying on the support of diverse, if not to say incompatible parties such as the Catalan Republican Left (ERC) or the Popular Party. The former's backing was sought to uphold its policy of spending cuts, particularly in the areas of health and education, while the latter's help was required to present what CiU sees as the panacea of a cross-party economic agreement similar to that reached in the Basque Country, and which regulates taxation and finances with the central government.

As protests mount over cuts to health, education, and social services, the Catalan regional government's response is to insist, over and again, that all will be made right through an economic agreement that would balance the fiscal deficit. Applying considerable rhetorical skills, CiU has managed to mix both arguments, as though the one were the solution for the other, and as though the current economic crisis had not affected countries with no sovereign debt issues, as is the case throughout most of the European Union.

CiU is once again playing the victim, portraying itself as though caught in the double bind of the deficit it inherited from the previous coalition and the current model of financing via the central government. It seems oblivious to the fact that this model provided Catalonia with 2.4 billion euros more in 2009 than the previous deal it agreed with the Popular Party in the 1990s, and that the deficit it has inherited from the region's three-way coalition is due in large part to a fall in tax revenue: precisely the same problem that the current administration led by Artur Mas faces in meeting its payment obligations for September and October. Catalonia's economy commissioner says that the region's independence is perfectly viable from an economic perspective, while at the same time calling for the central government to raise more money on the international markets to give to the regions.

CiU has been playing this game since the early days of the transition; it is now an integral part of its understanding of nationalism. But since the Constitutional Court in 2010 ruled that parts of its autonomy statute governing relations with the rest of Spain were unconstitutional, the language employed by the nationalist bloc in terms of the region's supposed rights has become increasingly radical. Hence the talk of a Catalan transition that has no end date, along with the right to decide on its future, both expressed in the vaguest terms but that would lead to an independent Catalonia, and of course designed to boost its appeal to nationalists in the polls.

CiU has clearly found a winning political formula with this approach: opinion polls say that 75 percent of Catalans want the kind of privileges enjoyed by the Basque Country through an economic agreement; while 42 percent would vote for independence in a referendum. Popular discontent is one way for CiU to boost its control over Catalan politics, but it should be remembered that the responsibility of government requires avoiding political adventurism, along with a duty not to divide society, however appealing in the short term these eventualities may appear.