Posted on 11/07/2015 12:01:52 PM PST by SeekAndFind
After winning a majority of seats (but not quite a majority of the vote) in September's plebiscite-style regional elections, Catalonia's pro-independence parties seem determined to untie the knot with Spain. Last week they announced a road map to independence, offering a declaration in the regional parliament to split Catalonia from Spain.
The all-too predictable reaction of Madrid's central government has been to raise the stakes to lofty new heights by threatening to cut off the financial supply lines between Madrid and Catalonia. As El Mundo reports, Spanish Premier Mariano Rajoy has threatened to centralize all financial decisions affecting the autonomous region; and if needed, it may even turn off the tap altogether.
A Dangerous Game Madrid's latest cunning plan is not without risks. In fact, it's riddled with them. Like all of Spain's provinces, Catalonia has grown increasingly dependent on the zero-interest (for this year only) Fondo de Liquidez Autonomico (FLA) offered by Madrid's central government to cover its financing needs, as Spain's finance minister, Cristobal Montoro, conceded yesterday.
"Until now, the public services of Catalonia and other parts of Spain in this fiscal crisis have not been able to finance themselves without the State, which is precisely there for that reason: to finance public services," Montoro said. "What it is not there for is to finance the separatist designs of any regional government."
In other words, you want our money, show some respect!
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
We want freedom...with subsidies. Sounds quite American.
Spain isn’t threatening to cut it off. They’re threatening to leave. They actually receive more money from the central givernment than any region in Spain right now, but they think they’ll get more by threatening.
On the other hand, maybe they’ll be dumb enough to try to be independent. For a while. Barcelona has a much higher Muslim population than anywhere else in Spain, and the Catalans have bent over backwards to build mosques for them. So maybe Catalonia will soon be Muslim.
If they weren’t blowing up half of Europe, I’d have some sympathy for them.
A Spain broken into bickering self-governed regions will be easier for the Moors to reconquer.
That’s what the world needs, yet another Mexico
Barcelona has been chafing at the bit ever since the union of Castille and Aragon under Ferdinand and Isabella put Aragon in the back seat of Spanish politics. Catalonia revolted in 1640 and it took the Spanish crown 12 years to suppress the revolt, and then only with the assistance of the hated French, who got Catalonia’s trans-Pyrenees provinces in return.
“A Spain broken into bickering self-governed regions will be easier for the Moors to reconquer”.
Spain has always been broken into bickering semi-autonomous regions for all its history.
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