The mystery of subsidies in Catalonia: a million missing data points

BarcelonaGathering all the grants awarded in Catalonia on a website that acts as a search engine, filtered by beneficiary and showing who grants them. That's what 32-year-old Gerard Martínez Adsuar, from Caldes de Montbui, has done, revolutionizing the public debate this week with the viral success of Subvenciones.cat. Why? The website suddenly stopped working and was restored after a few days. The outage, however, resulted in the loss of one million records. This data became inaccessible from the Catalan government's portals. The government has justified the outage by citing problems with data "overflow," which they assure will be resolved soon.

The leader of the PP, Alejandro FernándezHe brought the issue to the Catalan Parliament this week when he accused the Catalan government of "censoring websites," lamenting the "waste" of resources on subsidies, referring to the nearly €5 billion distributed annually. The deputy spokesperson for Junts in the Spanish Congress, Josep Maria Cruset, also has addressed the issue On social media, people are asking the executive branch to "clarify what they have removed from the database" and saying that, "otherwise, any other information the Catalan government might publish will lack credibility." However, on social media, the Aliança Catalana group has been the most vocal, using platforms like E-Notícies and Catalunya Woke. But beyond the political reactions, how does Subvenciones.cat work, and what do the missing data explain?

Gerard Martínez Adsuar created an easy-to-understand website about subsidies and another about public procurement. In a conversation with ARA, he says he decided to launch this portal "for transparency," because "public data is not the same as accessible data." "This is a weekend project. I did it on a silly Sunday; I dedicated eight hours to the procurement website and another eight to the subsidies website," he maintains. This project,The project, which has a lifespan of just over ten days, has developed so rapidly thanks to artificial intelligence, which allows for the "automation" of data, he explains. The programmer, a self-taught individual with a degree in business administration, runs a company called Cienciadedades.cat and develops applications focused on data analysis. Martínez Adsuar has been "surprised" by the viral spread and political impact of what he created in his spare time, after generating 30,000 pages from 5,000 users in a single day. Even so, he understands the debate given the vast amount of resources involved. He admits that it has resonated "a lot, especially on the far right"—and says he doesn't support it in any way—but he wonders why transparency doesn't concern the left. "Some people were pointing fingers at groups like Muslim associations or anti-homophobia groups; I think we need to debate without singling out specific groups," he concludes, criticizing the outcry published in X.

The portal stop

Why did the website go down two days ago? The conflict with the Catalan government stems from the fact that access to grant data was cut off. It was on Tuesday at 1:45 p.m. when the data from the Catalan government's Department of Economy, which feeds the website, went from being public to "private and inaccessible" and "for no apparent reason." Initially, Martínez Adsuar found the "technical problems" explanation without further clarification "strange." Access to the data was restored on Wednesday afternoon, although one million records were lost, according to Martínez Adsuar, corresponding to grants awarded by municipalities. Sources from the Department of Economy clarified to ARA that "it is a technical problem that is being addressed," but that for now they cannot "specify a timeframe," even though they are working to resolve it "as soon as possible." They also maintain that "data on grants affecting local governments is available in the National Grants Database until the issue with the Generalitat's platform is resolved." They emphasize that the only data not yet available on the Economy Ministry's website are those from municipalities. In this regard, they note that since Wednesday, "data on grants from the Generalitat has been available again."

From conflict to debate

Albert Cuesta, a journalist specializing in new technologies, told this newspaper that he doesn't know exactly what the problem is with the data migration process, but he is aware that the Centre for Telecommunications and Information Technologies, which is responsible for fixing these issues, has stated that the Catalan government is changing all its websites, which implies file changes. "It's plausible that this is due to an import error, without any intention of hiding it," he concluded. He added that the suspicion of concealment is dispelled since the information is available in another database. "Another issue is why we need two databases," he stated, "with the risk that they won't be synchronized." He also pointed out that the string of subsidies now being criticized has a long history.