Funding and Catalanophobia

In the sterile environment of the laboratory, the assertion that a funding system designed for 15 beneficiaries cannot be negotiated with just one makes some sense. In real life, life is like that, and we didn't invent it, as Sandro Giacobbe would have said.

We didn't invent the fact that the State doesn't allocate a fair amount to finance essential and expensive services provided by the autonomous communities, such as healthcare, education, and social services. Even though such an important funding structure depends on whether the Spanish government of the day has an absolute majority or needs Catalonia's votes. Or that the system can be outdated for many years and that its renewal doesn't have inescapable deadlines like the taxes we pay. And we also didn't invent the idea that political negotiation is presented as the Phoenician legacy of the Catalans.

On the other hand, what we did invent is the concept of autonomy within the Spanish state. And therefore, to all these Spanish socialists and populists who dare to say "Champagne and caviar" for Catalans and "set menu" for everyone elseWe must ask them why they believe they enjoy autonomy. Did it arise from a collective desire or was it a joint effort? The fact that Catalonia and the Basque Country spearheaded the demand for self-government doesn't seem to have prevented the others from joining in. Anti-Catalan sentiment is age-old, constitutive of Spanish identity. It has been the socially and politically accepted expression of a latent Catalanophobia that has now become publicly normalized. Only from a Catalanophobic perspective can one speak of "champagne and caviar" for Catalonia and "a set menu without dessert" for the rest, as the Andalusian Finance Minister, Carolina España, has done, while privately figuring out how she will renounce more than 4.8 billion euros that someone else negotiated for her.