Spain lifts financial control on Catalonia
Podemos accuses Sanchez of ‘arrogance’
MADRID, June 9, (AFP): Spain’s new Socialist government said Friday it would lift financial controls on Catalonia as a “gesture of normalisation” towards the separatist-minded region, but insisted an independence referendum was still “out of the question.”
Education minister and government spokeswoman Isabel Celaa said that banks would be “instructed to allow the government of Catalonia to make payments” without the supervision of Spain’s finance ministry.
The financial controls had been put in place by the previous conservative government of Mariano Rajoy in September 2017 to prevent the separatist regional government of Catalonia from financing a banned independence referendum on Oct 1.
But from now on, the Catalan government will simply have to provide a monthly spending report to the central government.
Speaking after the first cabinet meeting since Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez came to power, Celaa said the new premier would meet with Spain’s 17 regional government heads, including Catalonia’s new separatist president Quim Torra.
Catalan separatist formations had been among a string of smaller parties to back the no-confidence motion that ousted Rajoy.
Asked whether the government would be willing to discuss the possibility of Catalonia holding an independence referendum as demanded by Catalan separatists, Celaa said this was “out of the question”.
Sanchez spoke by phone with Torra on Friday and the two men “agreed to meet each other very soon,” a source in the Catalan government told AFP.
Spain’s far-left party Podemos, which helped the Socialists oust the conservatives and take power, accused new Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez of being “arrogant” for thinking “he could govern alone.”
Sanchez, 46, ousted conservative premier Mariano Rajoy last Friday in a parliamentary no-confidence vote, sparked by corruption convictions against former officials of Rajoy’s Popular Party (PP), which had governed for six years.
The Socialists, however, have a parliamentary minority and needed the support from Podemos as well as the Basque and Catalan nationalist lawmakers.
Spain’s influential El Pais newspaper approved Friday the appointment of its first woman editor, the daily’s owner said Friday, a day after a new Spanish government was sworn in with women holding the majority of ministerial posts.
El Pais’ board ratified the appointment of award-winning journalist
Soledad Gallego-Diaz, 67, to the post after the newspaper’s nearly 300 staff members overwhelmingly approved the move in a vote late on Thursday, Spanish media firm Prisa said in a statement.
Soledad Gallego-Diaz joined El Pais, the biggest Spanish-language publication in the world and an institution both in Spain and Latin America, shortly after its founding in 1976 as the country began its transition to democracy following the death of longtime dictator Francisco Franco.