A Public Reply to the Financial Times (VII)

Sirs,

Your correspondent is right to point up the "centralising instincts" of the new Spanish government ("Madrid targets regions in austerity drive", January 4, 2012). Tellingly, the economy minister himself is quoted saying that the present financial difficulties are "an opportunity to impose hard conditions" on the regions. You can be sure that these conditions will not be just financial but largely political. Relating in particular to Catalonia, a productive community which makes a huge contribution to the state and to the welfare of other regions, even to the detriment of some its own basic needs, and finds itself choked by Spain's discriminatory fiscal policies. Now its short-term liquidity problems, which would be easily solved if Catalans had control over their own money, can be used as an excuse to reimpose central rule and to undermine the thorn in the side of every Spanish government that is the reality of a Catalan national identity.