Pending official confirmation from the Volkswagen Group, Catalonia appears to have definitively lost the battle for the establishment of the electric vehicle battery manufacturing plant to the benefit of Sagunto, a project that was undoubtedly emblematic and very important for the Catalan government, unions and employers. The Valencian candidacy has defeated, not only Catalonia, but also bids from Aragón and Extremadura, in an unequally-run race on which the Spanish government has ended up making the difference and moving it away from the metropolitan Barcelona town of Martorell. The Valencian Country president, Ximo Puig, has ended up with a winning hand, in a bid also backed by the Ford plant in Almussafes, and will thus receive an infusion of oxygen for the regional elections in May 2022. In addition to obtaining a prize that was not expected, this will be accompanied by the creation of 3,500 direct jobs, many of them highly skilled; and it also reinforces the port of Valencia in the competition that it naturally maintains with the port of Barcelona, since that will be one of the departure routes.
One of the problems of the Catalan independence movement is not knowing - or not wanting to know - how to explain to the Catalan public what it really means, in practical terms, not to have a state of one's own or to belong to one that is willing to put up the fewest obstacles possible to Catalonia - from time to time, even to provide it with some help - in projects for its economic development, in order to let it take on its natural competitors on an equal footing. The same goes for the fiscal plunder, the disastrous system of autonomous community financing, and the permanent non-compliance in terms of infrastructure that does nothing but deepen the difficulties. Far removed from all this, the Spanish government has us all worked up over the debate for the transfer to Catalan government control of the Turó de l'Home weather station, which, in an almost insulting way, has been considered historic by the minister of the day and soon after, it became known that the transfer by Rodríguez Zapatero's Spanish government to the Generalitat was already announced in 2009, when José Montilla was president.
Although the announcement will be made official next week, all the media have taken it as final this Wednesday and, consequently, Catalonia has been left without recompense in a project that would have signified oxygen for the 15,000 workers of SEAT, a company that has had the first electric battery development centre in Spain since October and the fourth in the Volkswagen group in the world. In other words, the business and employment requisites seemed to exist, the location for export was optimal, but it required a governmental push from the Spanish ministry that just did not arrive or, if it did, it was drop by drop.
We can hope that the Catalan government and, at least, the pro-independence parties in Congress will each demand explanations for this at their own level. And that, also, unlike on other occasions, they draw the corresponding lesson from the matter. In politics, you can't let your opponent pull a swindle and simply get away with it. This same Wednesday it was announced that Primavera Sound, one of the emblematic music festivals of Barcelona, which has always been held in the Catalan capital, would hold an edition spread over two weekends in 2023 - but divided between Barcelona and Madrid. All this to the delight of the Catalan city's municipal government, which has celebrated that Barcelona continues to export the festivals created here to the rest of the world. I can only think that it must have been an awkward attempt to alleviate the fiasco or that the deputy mayor who made the statements takes us all for fools. We have only to look at the joy of those responsible on the Madrid side, starting with regional president Díaz Ayuso, to get an idea of what the real situation is.
What will be next? Rejoice because Barcelona's Mobile World Congress is to be distributed across several locations? Let’s be a little more serious, please.