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  • Media An organism of the Generalitat regrets that Netflix offers 0.5% of its content in Catalan

The relationship between the Government and its governance partners is a constant roller coaster, with ups and downs, demands, agreements, threats ... The

Audiovisual Law

finalized by the Executive represents a new chapter. Nationalist formations such as ERC, PNV or Bildu require that the regulations establish a quota of audiovisual production in co-official languages. Something that would force, for example, not only the usual communication groups, but also platforms such as

Netflix, Amazon

or

HBO

to produce in Catalan and Basque. The Executive does not contemplate establishing any threshold.

The demand of the Government partners occurs not only when it plans to bring the regulations to the Council of Ministers in the near future, but in the first stages of the negotiation for the General Budgets and in full agreement between the Government and ERC to sponsor the table of dialogue on Catalonia. To carry out the first two issues,

La Moncloa

needs the support of the nationalists. Hence, given their position of strength, they demand mandatory thresholds for audiovisual production in co-official languages, threatening not to support the regulations.

The warnings are clear: Gabriel Rufián, ERC spokesman in Congress, has considered that Catalan is "a minority language to protect" and that it should be "shielded" in this new regulation of the sector. For

Mertxe Aizpurua

, Bildu spokesperson, "it is very worrying that the protection of our languages ​​is left in the hands of platforms with Netflix, Amazon Prime or HBO, because it is clear which content they are going to choose."

Even the Catalan sector of Podemos, the

commons

, requires the Government of which they are part to work on the protection of Catalan and this is how they are transferring it. The Catalan and Basque governments have also criticized the law. The Generalitat believes that it "harms Catalan" because "it forgets and mistreats cultural diversity and linguistic wealth". From the

Basque Country they

recall that the text that they learned in July did not like them and that they presented allegations demanding equal treatment for all the languages ​​of the State.

The Government, for the moment, remains oblivious to these demands of its partners. The Vice Presidency for Economic Affairs is currently finalizing the text of the regulations, the latest version of which does not contemplate the requirement of percentages of audiovisual production in co-official languages. And, to this day, it does not plan to include them, according to government sources.

Vice President Nadia Calviño, on whose department this law depends, has assured after the Council of Ministers that "the Government is absolutely committed to the protection of the co-official languages, because it is a part of the wealth" of the country ", without wanting to enter into more controversial or open the door to some thresholds. The new text "will be scrupulously respectful of the competences of the autonomous communities and, in this case, with the possibility of establishing other types of protection measures for co-official languages ​​within their geographical area of ​​competence ".


Different industry sources are skeptical in this regard.

"How do you force Netflix to respect Galician or Bable if a Spanish law does not contemplate it?" Asks the representative of an actor in the sector who has participated in the public consultation phases.


The new Audiovisual Law will be the consequence of the transposition of a European directive, a process that should have concluded in September of last year but which, through Covid, has been postponed until this new political course, with the expectation that it will achieve its final approval in one of the next Councils of Ministers.


Rewriting the law

This rule is highly relevant for the sector because it tries to end the allegory that in many cases has prevailed among the new platforms, usually American companies that, among other points, have avoided supporting the financing of the public corporation

RTVE

.

The Spanish law currently in force, from 2010, does not establish a specific quota of audiovisual content in the so-called co-official languages, such as Catalan or Basque. And in the same sense, the preliminary draft of the next Law has been advancing in its two known wording: a first that was submitted to public consultation and that dates from the end of last year and a rewriting released in July and that was also submitted to public consultation. The third text, now final, has been sent to the Council of State, which must provide its verdict without public character.


Due to what has been agreed to date and as Calviño has implied, the new

General Law on Audiovisual Communication would

establish the requirement for service providers of this type to dedicate 5% of their income generated in Spain to financing works European audiovisual industry and, furthermore, that at least 70% of that amount is destined for independent productions. It is this section, which would be estimated at 3.5% of the company's total business in the country, which is at stake and in which language safeguards could be included that reduce the presence of Spanish. This language, in addition to being predominant in the country, serves to introduce some European content in

Latin America

, a territory of great relevance for companies like Netflix, which has decided to locate its largest European production studios in the Madrid town of

Tres Cantos

.

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