Game of impotence

Impotence. The manifestation of profound impotence, which means no capacity to exercise power. This is the main, true, and sad conclusion one reaches after reading the five pages of the agreement presented Monday by the Bilateral Commission between the Generalitat of Catalonia and the General State Administration. And even more so after comparing it with the investiture agreement between the Socialist Party of Catalonia and the Republican Left of Catalonia on August 7, almost a year ago. A negotiation between members of the same team so as not to upset each other.

It is true that the five pages of the Bilateral Commission's agreement attempt to approach the rhetoric of the investiture agreement, but they fall far short. Very far short. Not only do they not specify anything, but they dilute everything. The experts of the Bilateral Commission have taken eleven months, without any possible dissimulation, to convert the four pages that the investiture agreement devoted to the new financing model into the five pages of Monday's agreement, thus watering down its content. The role of the Catalan Tax Agency is blurred and the establishment of deadlines for the transfer of powers is ignored. Respect for the principle of ordinality is not specified. There is no timeline for implementing the supposed new financing system, which, moreover, remains subject to a long and uncertain legislative process in Madrid. However, it exceeds any requirement for conceptual coherence because at the same time it promises to be unique and generalizable, autonomous and coordinated, bilateral and multilateral... And, although this is about resources, there is no figure that commits the State to guarantee any immediate or future increase, that is, to reducing the fiscal deficit. Incidentally, up to seven times, when a change is announced, a "without prejudice to" is added... just in case. The eleven-year delay in the mandatory renewal of the Spanish tax model hasn't prompted them to make any predictions or outline the timing of the new agreement.

However, what is most interesting beyond the question of financing is the expression of political impotence confirmed by the agreement. We have already seen this in previous agreements, national, state, and international. From the pseudo-transfer of Renfe to the deadlock on immigration, the fiasco of Catalan in Europe, and even the strange non-agreement with NATO to allocate 5% of the Spanish budget to defense, and despite everything, sign it. In other words, what the Bilateral Commission presented on Monday, once again, was a non-agreement. A non-agreement that is a consequence of the impossibility of facing a fair solution for the fiscal deficit—if you want to call it plunder, because it is—to which all the Catalan Countries are particularly subjected. And this, due to a Spain of the autonomous communities that has endured not in a coffee for everyone, but rather on territorial privileges entrenched over the last forty years and which no one is now capable of shaking off. To deflate the possible hysterical reactions of the Spanish political opposition in its most rancid and patriotic form. Remember that Minister María Jesús Montero wants to be president of Andalusia... But not even then. A framework of her own inability to govern, with the only grace being her delirious prediction of an independent Catalonia thanks to Sánchez. Of agreements systematically broken by the Socialists, but in which any alternative scenario would be even worse for them. Financing, migration policies, rail and air mobility, the judicial system, with respect to linguistic and cultural diversity... - is an illusion of the spirit, a form of self-deception only useful for the survival of the sum of all inadequacies in dire times.