Spanish
life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable.
-
Christopher Howse: A
Pilgrim in Spain.
If
you've alighted here because of an interest in Galicia or Pontevedra,
see my web page here.
Cataluña:
Bits of the Jig-Saw. Or: Scenes from the Ealing comedy: We Have Ways
of Making You Democratic:
- Gathered under a giant Spanish flag on Saturday, thousands of people in central Madrid shouted Prison for Puigdemont.
- Shouting Viva España and Visca Catalunya and chanting Puigdemont to prison, hundreds of thousands of Spanish loyalists demonstrated in central Barcelona yesterday. Amid a festival atmosphere, protesters carrying Spanish and Catalan flags sang along as speakers blared out the 1970s hit, Y Viva España. The protest was largely peaceful, though a small group clashed with police.
- The anti-independence Catalan Civil Society, which organised the demonstration, claimed that 1.3m marchers attended. Police put the number at 300,000. Take your pick.
- Sr Puigdemont is expected to turn up for work today, despite having been sacked by Madrid last Friday.
- The Spanish foreign minister has said that Sr Puigdemont could stand in December’s elections, assuming he's not in prison for rebellion.
- Muddying the EU waters, a Belgian minister in favour of Flemish independence has said his country could offer asylum to Sr Puigdemont.
- Madrid has decided not to take over TV3 and Catalunya Radio, widely viewed as mouthpieces for the pro-independence Catalan government.
- More than 1,700 companies, including the banks Caixa and Sabadell and several utility companies, have decided to move their legal headquarters out of Catalonia since the referendum.
- On Friday, shares in Catalonian banks fell sharply on Spain’s Ibex-35. CaixaBank - Spain's third largest lender - fell by around 5% while Sabadell, the country's fifth biggest bank, fell roughly 6%.
- The Catalans are looking at introducing their variant to Bitcoin. (The Catcoin?) See the must-read article at the end of this post on the all-important financial aspects of this madness.The Guardian's opinion: Rajoy’s is a well-played hand, but perhaps also a bluff that could end in a flop. The nationalists may finally decide not to stand in the election and, if turnout is low, the new parliament’s legitimacy will look precarious. And if the nationalists pick up the gauntlet and present a united list, they could turn the election into an undeclared plebiscite on independence. This they may win, even if their platform for a sovereign republic will look somewhat redundant and contradictory. More here.
- Chinese flag-makers are reported to be delirious with joy. Except, of course, those who specialise on EU variants. These are said to be biding their time.
Life
in Spain
- Halloween 2017: A star is born
The
Spanish Language: Reader Perry has turned up the word transigencia
for 'compromise' or – perhaps more correctly – 'willingness to
compromise/tolerance'. English speakers will recognise it from its
antonym 'intransigence'. I must confess to never having heard or seen
it before.
In
the UK, the BBC has reported that an independent enquiry has looked
at energy prices over the last decade and concluded that a
quadrupling of cost against a background of falling oil prices
suggests that prices are 'too high'. Who'd have thought it?
Galicia:
Well, I never. The origin of name of the Pontevedran city of Vigo is
said by some to be the Roman Vicus
Spacorum. And It
is believed that it was the starting-point of Caesar’s campaign
against Britannia. Something else I've
never heard before.
Finally
. . . A British columnist yesterday
reminded me that, in my youth on Merseyside, we used turnips to carve
Halloween heads (jack-o'-lanterns), not pumpkins. Though a friend
told me last night they were not, in fact, turnips but the much larger swedes. Either
way, they were bloody hard to hollow out. And the flaming candles
would never stay upright. Said columnist added: As a kid in
Middlesborough, I once saw an avocado in our greengrocer’s. “What’s
that?” I asked the woman behind the counter. “Fuck knows”, she
replied. “Something from London, I’d bet”. Them was the days. Before we all became effete members of the middle class.
Catalans
race to create a new currency and economic fortress as independence
counter-attack builds: Ambrose Evans-Pritchard
The self-styled Republic of Catalonia is scrambling to put together the economic machinery of a sovereign state after the momentous vote for independence in the Catalan parliament, but the quixotic venture faces a devastating counter-attack from the Spanish state within days.
Large
global banks and funds are no longer convinced that premier
Mariano Rajoy can contain the crisis. It is one thing to invoke the
nuclear option of Article 155 under the Spanish constitution: it is
quite another to subdue the breakaway region.
Antonio
Montilla from Citigroup said Catalonia’s leaders are now in “open
rebellion against the Spanish state”, precipitating a drastic
response that has its own dreadful logic and risks spinning out of
control. “Violent confrontations and widespread civil unrest could
possibly follow. We do not believe the current impasse will escalate
into a civil war, even if we cannot rule out this scenario anymore.
We doubt any international mediation will occur – even if it did,
we doubt much progress could be made,” he said.
Catalan
separatists in the regional assembly voted for their republic with
stone-faced, funereal expressions, aware of the enormous dangers. The
Spanish judicial authorities (Fiscalia) plans to launch criminal
probes for ‘rebellion and sedition’ as soon as Monday, with
a prison tariff of 30 years. This is not like Brexit. Nobody talks
lightly of “having their cake and eating it”.
Fintech
experts in Barcelona are working feverishly behind the scenes to
create a blockchain currency beyond the control the Spanish state and
the European Central Bank, relying on advice from pioneers in Estonia
and from Etherium founder Vitalik Buterin. The desperate initiative
is akin to Syriza’s contingency “Plan B’ for a parallel
currency at the height of the Greek drama in 2015, which was never
activated in the end.
George
Danezis, an expert on crypto-currencies at University College London,
says such a scheme could create a ring-fenced infrastructure
that would be hard for Madrid to shut down. But blockchain
has inherent problems of scale. It is difficult to see how it could
replace euro-based transactions overnight and service a
sophisticated economy.
The
Catalan rebels say Spain’s fateful decision last week to imprison
two grass-roots leaders – ‘Los Jordis’ – for
peaceful resistance poisoned the political waters irreparably. Mr
Rajoy’s Partido Popular has stated from the outset that there can
be no dialogue with ‘golpistas’ (putschists). The chasm seems
unbridgeable.
Mr
Rajoy now has the grim task of implementing Article 155. This means
evicting the region’s leaders by force and taking over the Catalan
state: the Mossos d’Esquadra (police), the TV3 television station,
and the administrative apparatus of the Generalitat.
Catalan
leader Carles Puigdemont has hinted at mobilisation on the streets.
The hard-left CUP party vows “massive civil disobedience” in what
it now calls full resistance (lluita i de resistència).
The
great unknown is whether the 17,000-strong Mossos will take their
instructions from Madrid or Barcelona. If large numbers rally to the
new republic, there will be a showdown with the 11,000 members of the
national police and Guardia Civil. The army might have to step in.
Investors
are struggling to keep up with the fast-moving events on the ground.
The euro fell to $1.1578 against the dollar on Friday after the
sharpest two-day drop this year. But this is hard to separate
from reactions to the ECB’s open-ended plan to stretch bond
purchases until September 2018.
The
IBEX index of equities in Madrid fell 1.45%, led by Catalan lenders
Sabadell and Caixabank as well as BBVA, which holds a quarter of
the Catalan market. Risk spreads on Spain’s 10-year bonds jumped
seven points to 120 but there is no sign of serious alarm.
It
is a muted response to a declaration of independence by the
country’s most dynamic region, commanding a fifth of GDP. Yet
the crisis is already inflicting economic damage. Spain’s Target2
deficit in the ECB’s internal payments system has risen to a record
€384bn (£339bn), a sign of underlying capital flight.
The
national fiscal body (AIReF) has halved its growth forecast to 1.5pc
next year and warned of recession in Catalonia, which has seen
an exodus of 1,700 Catalan companies switching their legal
headquarters to other parts of Spain.
Mr
Rajoy’s minority government is on borrowed time. The budget has
been delayed. He needs Basque votes but regional leader Inigo Urkullu
says he is “radically opposed” to use of Article 155. The Basque
PNV party has denounced what it calls an assault on Catalonia’s
“legitimate institutions”.
The
Spanish finance minister warned before the referendum that Catalonia
would be thrown out of the euro and face “brutal pauperisation”,
with a devaluation of up to 50%. GDP would collapse by 25 to 30%. The
new state would be a pariah, without trade access to the EU single
market or to Spain.
The
trouble with this scenario is that it would entail a break-up of the
euro, setting off systemic panic. It would be a traumatic shock to
the Spanish economy. The acrimonious split would push Spain’s
public debt to 120pc of GDP and cause the fiscal deficit to explode.
It
is clearly impossible to separate a Catalan crash from a Spanish
crash. Bond purchases by the ECB are for now keeping a lid on Spanish
yields but trouble may start once the pace of purchases is halved in
January. IHS Markit warns that Spain may ultimately need an EU
bail-out, if the political drama festers.
Active
mediation by the EU might have defused the crisis earlier. Brussels
has instead backed Madrid at every step of the way, even
describing the treatment of Catalan voters by the Guardia Civil as
“proportionate” use of force.
It
is has fallen to the non-EU Council of Europe to call for restraint
and subtler statecraft. This has been noticed by dissident movements
across Europe. It will have consequences.
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