Why do businessmen in Catalonia consider more important an investiture agreement that includes an amnesty for those prosecuted by the process and that, therefore, opens the door of the Government to Pedro Sánchez and Yolanda Díaz, when their colleagues in Madrid insist for achieving the failure of these negotiations and do they consider it necessary to call new elections to see if, this time, a new majority emerges that will give the key to Moncloa to Alberto Núñez Feijóo and Santiago Abascal?
Last Thursday, while the president of the Cercle d'Economia, Jaume Guardiola, presented his proposal for a conditional amnesty in Barcelona, the president of the CEOE, Antonio Garamendi, once again spoke out without fissures against it for the second or third time. This at the same time that the president of Foment, the Catalan associate of the large Spanish employers' association, Josep Sánchez Llibre, has been preparing the ground for months for there to be a political agreement on the measure of grace for Carles Puigdemont and the independentists who have pending legal cases. Behind the positions of Foment and Cercle are the vast majority of economic and union organizations in Catalonia, from PIMEC to CECOT and the Chamber of Barcelona. Also CC.OO. and UGT.
What is the cause of this overwhelming lack of empathy from the capital's money towards its Barcelona colleagues, overwhelmed after years of political and social ineffectiveness and paralysis in its territory of direct influence?
It is obvious that the capital's elite denies some features of the Government's economic policy, both the one that is now in office and the one that is being suggested after the agreement between the PSOE and Sumar, also presented this week. But that does not mean that Catalan businessmen do not see it, in this area, in a practically identical way. On almost all issues, both parties have agreed in their criticism of the fiscal, budgetary or labor policy of Sánchez's executive, with whom they have been in dispute for some time.
Apparently, the hard core of Spanish economic power is more concerned about respect for legality, the authority of the rule of law and the equality of Spaniards, which would be seriously damaged, in their opinion, with an amnesty. But it is difficult to show more concern than that expressed by the Catalan bourgeoisie when, with these arguments, it moved the headquarters of thousands of companies and its two large banks out of Catalonia after the October 2017 referendum.
On the other hand, not many complaints were heard in Madrid when Mariano Rajoy's government approved the tax amnesty of its Finance Minister, Cristóbal Montoro, in 2012. Not in Barcelona either. Equality before the law was not a cause of controversy in these environments.
In terms of political analysis, the unqualified rejection of a government agreement between PSOE-Sumar with the parliamentary support of the Catalan independentists, especially Junts, on account of the amnesty, allows both that economic core and the Spanish right, not focus exclusively on criticism of the Government's economic policy. It supports the opposition line without economic interests being the only argument.
But from the clearly divergent positions between the two business groups it is also possible to deduce a reading in terms of competition, in this case of territorial elites. It would not be good at all, they have already been doing it for decades regarding the State's investment policies, a way of distributing the cake that favors some businessmen over others. Beyond the outstanding social impact that this matter has.
In Madrid, the existence of more than one center of power has always been misunderstood, that is, another center other than that one. The awareness of this dispute has marked generations of businessmen in Madrid and Barcelona. And the controversial issue of amnesty should not be read aside. Catalan business organizations dream of the recovery of normality and the return of companies. In Madrid DF they do not see anything good in retracing that path, in fact they prefer that it not be taken. That is why they do not understand the option of their Catalan colleagues to support the agreement between the socialists and the independentists, which will also save a Sánchez who they see as an enemy of their interests.
It has been a long time since we heard talk in Madrid of the long-awaited “market unity”, for so long a battlehorse of large Spanish companies, due to the supposed barriers erected in Catalonia to stop or prevent their entry or to protect indigenous firms. .
It will have fallen into oblivion because if this “market unity” does not exist it is above all due to the breakdown of balance and equality in the payment of taxes between the elites of Madrid and those of the majority of the remaining autonomous communities; Lately less so after the changes in some of them governed by the popular ones. A change, by the way, that the taxpayers of the communities that are already the ones that pay the most run the risk of ending up paying, as they have been doing after each tax reduction in the community of Madrid.
It was an arid debate about labeling, language, regulations, environmental fees, authorizations or inspections. It looked like the end of the world. Now, however, when it comes to hard cash, if it is not expressly paid, there is no need to talk about “market unit.” And when the Government proposes a measure to moderate the differences: recourse to the Constitutional Court.
