‘Chronicle of a premeditated offense’: Catalonia issues list of grievances

The Catalan government today issued a report titled ‘Chronicle of a premeditated offense: consequences for the people of Catalonia’ (pdf, in Catalan). In this document, the Catalan administration accuses Spain of stifling, limiting and scaling back self-rule in Catalonia, with serious consequences for the welfare of citizens.

Among other things, the document denounces what it describes as Spain’s unwillingness to maintain a dialogue with Catalonia and its attack on the Catalan public school system. It also lambasts Spain’s 71% cuts to investment in Catalonia between 2009 and 2014, and its cuts to entitlement programs such as the carers’ allowance.

The Minister for the Presidency, Francesc Homs, has requested to lay the report before parliament.

The Catalan government commissioned the document at its 3 March meeting, in response to the steady trickle of moves on the part of the Spanish government seeking to curtail Catalonia’s autonomy, including the challenging of several Catalan laws before Spanish courts.

The one-hundred-page long paper analyses what it describes as the recentralization of powers that Spain has carried out in the economic and legal arena.

The document also draws attention to the sharp contrast between Spain’s ‘inaction’ when it comes to negotiating with Catalonia (jurisdiction transfers, fiscal pact, right to decide) or to carrying out legal sentences adverse to its interests, and its ‘hyperactivity’ when it comes to recentralizing power and curtailing Catalan self-rule in all avenues of action—whether it is social, economic, or institutional policy.

The paper also discusses Spain’s unwillingness to dialogue despite the Catalan government’s requests to seek a negotiated and mutually agreed-upon solution that would meet the wish of an ample majority of the Catalan population to decide the nation’s political future.