ON
THE WAY
After the elections of September 27th Catalonia
is still living such a passionate political moment.
“The parliament isn’t working” This was one of the
most known headline three weeks ago. The results were very clear: Catalonia is divided
into parts, and the other one that wants to live the same
way as before, without any change.
Catalonia is known as one of the richest and most
productive regions of Spain. Therefore, Catalans always have required more
autonomy for their institutions such as education, culture, health service and
many others. Actually, this conflict isn’t new, since 1900 Catalonia has asked politically
many times a new financial system to equilibrate the money that Catalonia send
to Madrid and the money that it receives after the distribution among all Spanish
regions. The main problem is when the money returns to Catalonia, it only
receives the 60% of all the GDP produced, that way many institutions can’t
finance themselves.
Catalonia, as a very talkative region, has many times tried
to solve this problem with the central government. The first attempt was in
1932, many years ago, where 99% of Catalans supported the nationalist project: “Estatut
de Núria” with a legal referendum, however, Spanish government didn’t respect
the will of a people and they automatically contested it. The second attempt
was in 1979. The second “Estatut d’autonomia” recognized Catalonia as a nation
with culture, history and language, nevertheless, Spanish government contested
it another time and Catalan will was not respected. There are many other
attempts such as Estatut d’autonomia of 2006 or the Fiscal Pact. The point is
that they have something in common: Catalan will isn’t respected in any of the
treaties.
It’s normal that a very big majority of Catalan people
want to be free to solve of the financial problems with their institutions and
to keep saving their culture, education or traditions. Hence, on September 27th
Catalonia organized plebiscite elections to know if Catalan people wanted to be
free or not. There were two positions, the one in favor of freedom and the one
against. The positions in favor of freedom won enough seats to start the
process, the problem was that the big coalition called Junts pel Sí, didn’t
have the absolute majority to govern by their own, they needed the radical
Catalan left, CUP, to form a government and invest Artur Mas I Gabarró, the man
who was supposed to be the main key in this process.
CUP as a very radical nationalist group didn’t want
Artur Mas as a president, because they identified him as the Catalan
bourgeoisie and also with all the corruption of CDC and Pujol’s family. They
were very clear; they wouldn’t invest Artur Mas in any of the situations, so
the process was stopped and many people said that it was completely broken.
The negotiations between Junts pel Sí and CUP were by
initially really hard. There wasn’t any agreement between the two nationalist
groups. They had about two months to invest a president or automatically
elections would be convoked. After two moths negotiations were at the same
point as they were when they started. It was just missing one day to finish
negotiations when finally the two groups arrived at one agreement: Artur Mas
would step aside to keep saving the Catalan process and continue with the way
to an independent state. The person that Artur Mas trusted is Carles Puigdemont
the mayor of Girona. The investiture debate was celebrated on Sunday 9th and
he was proclaimed the 130th president of the Generalitat de Catalonia.
Catalan process is alive and the will of many Catalans
is to be freedom in a modern democratic state where all their rights are
absolutely respected and guaranteed. Many years of claim will be listened to
form a new county called Catalonia.
DAVID ALMÉCIJA
2 BATX B
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