Nationalism is not only war, as Mitterrand said: it is also ruin . The five-year process that Catalonia already suffers translates into an institutional degradation, a painful social confrontation and a desperate political paralysis; but also in an economic worsening that all the indicators already register. The last has been the National Statistics Institute (INE). In the review of the regional accounting published yesterday, the INE notes that the Gross Domestic Product of the Community of Madrid surpassed the Catalan already in 2018. Madrid's autonomy thus leads the ranking of national wealth, which is an empirical endorsement of the model liberal successfully implemented in Madrid and sustained over time in the face of a management kidnapped by the identity obsession that the Generalitat has been promoting for years.

The campaign deployed by the Catalan National Assembly (ANC) to boycott companies not affected by the independence ideology serves as a penultimate example of this pernicious drift. Against this infamous initiative, Labor Promotion filed a complaint for the alleged crimes of unfair competition and alteration of free competition; Fortunately, the commercial court number 11 of Barcelona has attended its protest and the ANC campaign must be canceled.

For years Catalonia has been the first economy in Spain. But the INE exercise shows that the slowdown of the Catalan economy has been especially pronounced : in 2018 it grew just 2.2%, below the 2.4% that advanced the whole of Spain's GDP and far from 3.1 % that Madrid picked up. Most notable is the downward revision of the 2017 data, the year in which the illegal 1-O referendum was held; That year the Catalan economy barely recovered 2.5%, also below the national and Madrid average.

The worst thing is that the slowdown of the Catalan economy as a result of the independence process - which has discouraged investment, expelled companies and contracted tourism - has no prospects of being redirected in the short and medium term. Quite the opposite: the endemic risk factor that separatism itself implies for the economy will be linked to the general crisis context. The partisan use of the Luxembourg ruling by independentist formations that have power in Catalonia threatens to perpetuate instability, and even to redouble it . The accreditation as MEPs of Carles Puigdemont and Toni Comín in the European Parliament implies in practice the political rehabilitation - which is not judicial - of the most extreme and frontal faction of separatism.

Yesterday we met the data of the Center of Opinion Studies of the Generalitat according to which 47.9% of the Catalans surveyed after the publication of the 1-O ruling rejects the independence of Catalonia, compared to 43.7% who support it . It would be desirable for the progressive deterioration of the economy to help many Catalans to understand the great scam that is hidden under the promises of prosperity spread by secessionism. But above all it would be desirable to reach an agreement of constitutional unity in the Government of the nation to guarantee not only the equality of all, but also the prosperity of all.

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  • Catalonia
  • INE
  • ANC
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  • European Parliament
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  • Carles Puigdemont
  • Spain
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