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Pro-Independence parties win Catalan elections
Jordi Oriola Folch    Off_Guardian , 17 February 2021
off-guardian.org/2021/02/16/pro-independence-parties-win-catalan-elections/


For the third time in a row, the Catalan pro-independence movement wins with an absolute majority in the Catalan elections. It has won resoundingly with 74 seats, more than the 68 that establishes the majority (in the previous elections it had won with 70). This time also with 51.22% of the votes, making it the majority among the voters.

The elections were due next year, but they were brought forward because the Spanish courts overthrew Catalan President Joaquim Torra for having disobeyed an electoral board that ordered him to take down a banner criticising the imprisonment of Catalan politicians. The President refused, citing freedom of expression, and the Spanish judiciary considered that the contempt was sufficient to force the removal of the President of the Parliament of Catalonia and cause the elections to be brought forward.

Furthermore, after consulting experts on the pandemic, the provisional Catalan executive decided to postpone the elections for five months until the third wave of Covid-19 had subsided. However, yet again, the Spanish judiciary interfered forcing the elections to be held on 14th February.

This is the same Spanish Justice that keeps 9 Catalan politicians and activists in prison, that has issued search and arrest warrants against 7 exiled Catalan politicians (which the German and Belgian courts rejected because they did not see the accusations as justified or because they understood that there were no guarantees of a fair trial in Spain), it is the same Spanish Justice that maintains the search and arrest warrant against a Majorcan musician –exiled in Belgium– for singing against the King of Spain and that is imminently going to imprison another Catalan musician, Pablo Hasel, for also having sung against the King.

In this context, and despite having the entire state apparatus and the Spanish press against them, independence has won again, and has done so obtaining a larger absolute majority than ever and with over 51% of the votes. In front of the pro-independence movement, we have the former Spanish socialist health minister during the pandemic, who has had the full support of the state, the press and unionism in general, and also the Spanish extreme-right of VOX, which has burst onto the Catalan Parliament with 11 seats.

Given this scenario, the Spanish state and the European Union cannot deny the right of self-determination of Catalan society, which must be expressed in a referendum with democratic guarantees, transparency and without foul play.

All in all, democracy is about allowing citizens to decide at the ballot box, not about violating their will with the application of laws that should in fact serve to guarantee there is a framework that respects what societies want for themselves.

Jordi Oriola i Folch is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and founder of Transforma Films. His work has been broadcast on television stations around the world and touches on issues of human rights, sustainability, democratic participation and community work, historical memory and the economic crisis. He has also taught audiovisual classes in the Basque Country, Catalonia, South America and Africa. He can be reached through his website or twitter.



https://english.elpais.com/society/2021-02-08/spain-approaches-end-of-phase-1-of-covid-vaccination-campaign.html

El Pais - PABLO LINDE
Madrid - 08 FEB 2021 
Spain approaches end of phase 1 of Covid vaccination campaign

Spain’s Covid-19 vaccination campaign is entering the final stages of the process of immunizing residents of senior residences, while the majority of healthcare workers have also received their first jab – many have also got the second. Meanwhile, the final part of this first phase, inoculating adults with need for daily assistance even if they are not in residential care, has begun in the Canary Islands, Murcia and Navarre. This process is expected to get going in the rest of the country before the middle of February.

EL PAÍS has collected statistics in an attempt to take a snapshot of where the vaccination process has got to in Spain and these are the principal conclusions. Despite a year having passed since the first coronavirus infections having been detected in the country, the system for collecting data on the health crisis is still deficient. The Health Ministry has not centralized the collection of information on the vaccination process and just 11 of the country’s 17 autonomous regions have supplied sufficiently detailed figures.
The process is both complex and flexible. The first three groups in phase 1 of the campaign overlap in order to optimize the process, and so that it continues without pause. Healthcare workers started receiving the vaccine before the process finished in senior residences, and adults with need for daily assistance will start being immunized before all healthcare staff have had their doses.

Along the same lines, some regions are already planning for the over-80s – who are the first group in phase 2 – to start the process before phase 1 has finished. There are around 380,000 adults with need for daily assistance, and they are a complicated group to vaccinate given that home visits are often needed. It could be more efficient to vaccinate non-dependent seniors at the same time – this group is made up of 2.8 million people and accounts for six in every 10 Covid deaths in Spain. In January of this year, more than 1,300 people over the age of 80 died every week with the disease.

To complicate the situation further, not all of the approved vaccines are going to be administered to everyone. The AstraZeneca vaccines, which will start arriving in Spain this week, will only be given to people aged between 18 and 55, given that this is the group where clinical trials have proved it to be effective. For now, the Health Ministry has decided that it will be used to immunize healthcare workers who are not on the front line, and next week a decision will be made on which section of the population to prioritize – it could be essential workers or young people with underlying health conditions.
This, in effect, is what some regions are already doing. It is not completely clear which healthcare workers are being immunized in phase 1, and in many cases, the authorities have opted to give all staff in hospitals their doses, independently of their role. In Madrid, for example, a higher percentage of healthcare workers have received the second dose of the vaccine than among seniors who live in residences. This is despite the fact that senior residences – where more than half of official Covid deaths took place in Spain, according to the Health Ministry’s figures – were the absolute priority of the central government’s vaccination plan.

That said, the available data suggests that immunity is not far off for residents of the country’s senior residences. With the information supplied by the regions, nearly all residents and staff have got their first dose, and the majority of regions have administered the second dose to more than half of the recipients.

The process in residences is being delayed due to outbreaks in some of these centers. According to regional health departments consulted by EL PAÍS, this is not presenting a problem given that the process is simply being postponed where there is a high number of people infected.
Data supplied last week by the Catalan regional authorities show that the vaccines are starting to have an effect, and that number of new infections is rising less inside such residences compared to outside. Fernando Simón, the director of the Health Ministry’s Coordination Center for Health Alerts (CCAES), also said on Thursday that outbreaks in these centers are falling and that comparisons made by the ministry between the over-65s who live in residences and those who do not show a lower infection rate among the former.

The full protection offered by the vaccines, however, does not arrive until a week after the second dose. With the extreme levels of transmission that are currently being seen in Spain – the 14-day cumulative number of coronavirus cases per 100,000 inhabitants is around 750 – it is no surprise that the virus is finding its way into senior residences during this process, infecting inhabitants, and even claiming the lives of those who have been inoculated. The risk after the first shot is low, but it still exists.
The latest data from the Health Ministry shows that all regions have administered more than 70% of the doses that they have received. The authorities insist that the problem now will not be the capacity to deliver the vaccines, but rather the number that Spain will receive. From this weekend onward, that number will rise, with, for example, AstraZeneca sending 1.8 million doses this month. And it will go up even more in March, which is when a new vaccine – from Janssen – may be added to the list. The vaccination process for adults with need for daily assistance even if they are not in residential care will be a good means to measure the agility of the system.
With reporting by María Sosa, Isabel Valdés and Lucía Bohórquez.
English version by Simon Hunter.









Leftinspain
I am a  bit of an anomaly, a British  migrant, an expat if you like,   living in Spain, who sees life from a left point of view.

Catalonia could be an extremely successful economy and EU member state

5/11/2017

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Catalonia could be an extremely successful economy and EU Catalonia could be an extremely successful economy and EU member statemember state

Hamish McRae 31 October 2017         INDEPENDENT
"It is not for foreign economists to take positions on the independence of Catalonia, for that is for the people of Catalonia and Spain to decide. What can be said, though, is that if Catalonia were to become a fully independent country there is no reason why it should not – after a period of disruption – be an extremely successful economy.
There are a number of reasons why this is likely to be so. For a start, it has a population of 7.5 million. There is no right or wrong size as such, for there are successful countries that are very small: Luxembourg, with a population of just under 600,000, is the richest country in the world in terms of GDP per person. (Monaco probably comes in higher, but it is a special case.) And of course the three largest countries in terms of population – China, India and the US – are also success stories in their own ways.

But there does seem to be a sweet spot in the 5 million to 15 million bracket, where countries are big enough to offer their citizens a full range of services but are also small enough to be socially cohesive. This includes Ireland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Switzerland. Catalonia would naturally join that group.

That argument leads to a second condition for success: location. Countries cannot choose their location, and have to make the best of what they have. But if your neighbours are doing well, unless you deliberately cut yourself off from them, you will tend to be pulled along too. Catalonia, in that sense, is lucky in several ways. It has prosperous neighbours, France and the rest of Spain (though relations with the latter would be difficult for a while). It has a coastline, and a Mediterranean one at that. Barcelona and Tarragona, a little to the south, are Spain’s two largest ports.
Third, it has an established economic base. It is a manufacturing centre, has two top-ranking business schools, and the usual array of service industries. Separatists have noted that though Catalonia has about 18 per cent of Spain’s population, it generates more than 20 per cent of its GDP. Were it to be fully independent, with Barcelona and its 1.6 million people, it would have one of the glitziest capital cities on earth.
A final point: Catalonia has brand recognition. Brand is an intangible advantage, but can be deployed to leverage other economic advantages. Ireland is a fine example of that, using its brand (and its educated workforce) to make it a base for high-tech American companies seeking to enter the European market. On its own, Catalonia could be nimble in attracting business, and consequently creating jobs, than it has been as part of Spain.


But these advantages are general ones, formidable in the medium and long run, but less helpful in the short. To get from here to there is difficult, and political disruption leads to economic disruption. Unlike the separation of the Czech Republic and Slovakia, if this is to be a divorce, it will not be a velvet one.
There are a string of practical questions. What currency would Catalonia use? It would probably have to establish its own, as it would be difficult to continue to use the euro, even informally. In the long run, a separate currency might well to be the country’s benefit, for the inflexibility that the euro has imposed on Spain is one of the reasons why it has such high unemployment. But in the immediate days and months after independence, this would be very disruptive. It would be difficult for the banks based there, some of which have said they would relocate their legal headquarters. It would also be difficult for business and tourism.
​My guess is that an independent Catalonia would be welcomed into the EU if it still wanted to rejoin, but that could take a decade. In the meantime we are seeing hostility from the EU. As for the other major countries, while their present stance of not recognising Catalonia is quite understandable and correct, if and when the country became truly independent, they have no option but to accept reality. But – and this is important – there is a considerable economic cost to political disruption on this scale.

The call for calm by Catalonia’s sacked leader Carles Puigdemont is sensible and strikes a helpful tone. Let’s see what happens. But if the end does turn out to be a new European country, then in another decade it is likely to be a prosperous one.




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    I am a  bit of an anomaly, a British  migrant, an expat if you like,   living in Spain, who sees life from a left point of view. 

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