of a referendum on independence in the next legislature, just minutes
after the Spanish Deputy Prime Minister, Soraya Saenz de Santamaria,
said that the Madrid government will use all mechanisms at its
disposal to prevent it. The Convergència I Unió (CIU) initiative saw
84 votes in favour, with the support of ICV, ERC and Solidaritat,
Deputy Joan Laporta and the Socialist deputy Ernest Maragall, brother
of former Catalan president Joan Maragall.
The PSC abstained (25) and the 18 members of the PP and three members
of Ciutadans voted against. President of Cataluña , Artur Mas, this
week raised the possibility of a referendum on self-determination in
the region, a day after announcing an early election for November 25.
Minutes before the vote, Spain's Deputy Prime Minister, Soraya Saenz
de Santamaria, warned that the government will use all means available
to prevent Cataluña holding a referendum on this issue.
Uncertainty over Spain's ability to control its economy, and
especially the regional governments which make up around half of total
spending, has been further rattled by rising demands for independence
in the wealthy north-eastern state of Cataluña. The deputy prime
minister said the region was not permitted to hold a referendum on
independence before consulting with the rest of the country.
The possible independence of Cataluña faces numerous legal challenges,
starting with the Spanish Constitution, which establishes the
"indissoluble unity" of Spain in its second article. Meanwhile, the
Spanish government yesterday announced the country's most severe round
of budget cuts yet. It announced a detailed timetable for economic
reforms and a tough 2013 budget based mostly on spending cuts in what
many see as an effort to pre-empt the likely conditions of an
international bailout.
Spanish government ministries saw their budgets slashed by 8.9 percent
for next year, as Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy's battle to reduce one
of the euro zone's biggest deficits was made harder by weak tax
revenues in a prolonged recession. However, the conservative
government said tax revenue would be higher in 2012 than it had been
originally budgeted for and would grow 3.8 percent next year from this
year.
Spending cuts would be worth 0.77 percent of gross domestic product in
2013, while adjustment in revenue would be worth 0.56 percent of GDP.
"This is a crisis budget aimed at emerging from the crisis ... In this
budget there is a larger adjustment of spending than revenue," Deputy
Prime Minister Soraya Saenz de Santamaria told a news conference after
a marathon six-hour cabinet meeting.
Spain, the euro zone's fourth largest economy, is at the centre of the
crisis. Investors fear that Madrid cannot control its finances and
that Rajoy does not have the political will to take all the necessary
but unpopular measures. Madrid is talking to Brussels about the terms
of a possible European aid package that would trigger a European
Central Bank bond-buying program and ease Madrid's unsustainable
borrowing costs.
The measures continue to heap pressure on the crisis-weary population
and are likely to fuel further street protests, which have become
increasingly violent as tensions rise and police are given the green
light to use force to disperse crowds. A quarter of all Spanish
workers are unemployed and tens of thousands have been evicted from
their homes after a burst housing bubble in 2008 and plummeting
consumer and business sentiment tipped the country into a four-year
economic slump.
The prime minister's image, both at home and abroad, has also
deteriorated rapidly since his party won an absolute parliamentary
majority last November. Newspaper pictures of the conservative Rajoy
smoking a cigar on Sixth Avenue in New York while protesters gathered
in Madrid fuelled criticism of his detached attitude toward Spain's
mounting problems.
http://www.chronicle.gi/headlines_details.php?id=26158
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