Catalonia votes for more freedom

Catalonia gained sweeping powers to run its affairs after voters overwhelmingly approved a new blueprint for the region.

Nearly three out of four voters said yes to the plan, known as the “estatut” or statute, in a binding referendum yesterday.

The vote is the culmination of a process which has dominated debate in Spain for more than two years.

“The people of Catalonia have written a page in our history,” said the Catalan regional president Pasqual Maragall. “We met the challenge we set out for ourselves.”

At stake in the region, which considers itself a nation within a nation, were a much bigger slice of tax revenues collected in Catalonia, a say in the appointment of judges and prosecutors to courts run from Madrid and, critically, an indirect proclamation of Catalonia as a “nation”.

The new charter also gives the Mediterranean region control over a variety of areas such as infrastructure, including train services and roads, and work permits for immigrants in the region.

The referendum was binding and the results are final because the blueprint has already been passed by the Spanish parliament and the Catalan regional legislature, which first devised the proposal, although it was later watered down somewhat.

Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who supported the new charter, welcomed the results and said Spain’s other regions are free to seek overhauls of their own statutes. Two of them – the Balearic islands in the Mediterranean and Andalusia in the south – are already in the process of doing so.

Mr Zapatero has previously said he will offer other regions the same lucrative new tax arrangement that Catalonia has just obtained.

“The people of Catalonia have spoken clearly. They have supported the statute, which is going to give good results for Catalonia and for Spain,” he said.

With 99.7% of the votes counted, 74% of voters approved the charter and 21% said no, the Catalan government said. Turnout was 49%.

Conservatives opposed the new charter saying it effectively nudges Catalonia away from the rest of Spain, unfairly singles it out for special perks and will in fact encourage other Spanish regions to seek the same.

This, they say, poses the risk of leaving the Spanish government with no money or power to run the country, rendering it meaningless.

Josep Pique, leader of the Catalan branch of the opposition Popular Party, said it was a bad day for Spain in general. “Today we suffered an extraordinary setback,” he said.

Asun Busquets, a 40-year-old secretary in Barcelona, said she voted yes to the new charter because Catalonia deserves more powers to compensate for its economic might – 20% of the Spanish economy. “It is a way of achieving equality with the rest of Spain,” she said.

But Gabino Escribano, a 38-year-old industrial technician who is from the Valencia region further south, said he had voted against the charter because he thinks it was not good for Catalonia or Spain.

“I don’t like the idea of Spain breaking up,” he said. Catalan politicians, he said “are playing with fire.”

The new powers overhaul a nearly 30-year-old charter that granted Catalonia a large degree of self-rule after the death of Gen Francisco Franco in 1975 and the end of a regime bent on concentrating power in Madrid.

Other Spanish regions, such as the Basque country, have similar deals. But the Catalans and Basques have more self rule than any other part of Spain.

Nationalists – and the Socialist government in Madrid – say that the existing Catalan arrangement was outdated, especially given Catalonia’s distinct culture and economic strength.

A poll published May 30 in El Mundo newspaper said 54% of Spaniards oppose the new charter and about the same proportion say it should be put to a national vote, not just in Catalonia.