The Diplomat in Spain

Photo of Raül Romeva at the catalan Parlament.

The Diplomat. 03/03/2018

The Government of Mariano Rajoy estimates that the Catalan Ministry of Foreign Affairs directed by Raül Romeva allocated around 29 million euros in 2017 to activities related to the internationalization of the Catalan independence process, almost half of the 64 million euros budget that had last year.

According to official sources, only 35 million of this budget can be justified as current expenses of a Ministry that, in addition, had increased its funds since in 2011, its budget amounted to about 11 million euros.

The Government found enough resistance when applying article 155 of the Constitution to this Council. The diplomat sent to Barcelona by Foreign Affairs after the application of the mentioned article, Juan Fernández Trigo, came to have to have police protection after having suffered insults and harassment in the street.

After the closing of 11 of the 12 delegations of Catalonia that functioned as political embassies and the cessation of the delegate in Brussels -precisely, this is the only delegation that remained open-, now only the settlement of the Catalan Public Diplomacy Consortium is pending, known as Diplocat, which must be done before April 15, as provided for in the royal decree on its liquidation, which stipulated a period of four months.

The liquidation of Diplocat will continue even if before that date there is a new regional government in Catalonia, because that royal decree is mandatory and the liquidation commission appointed by the Council of Ministers must complete its task.

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The dissolution of Diplocat will take place before April 15, as planned by the Government

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The dissolution of Diplocat is pending resolution of the employment regulation file, which affects 38 people – none of them official – and denounces the rental contract, which is valid until the end of the year, to be able to conclude it in April . Diplocat pays 4,960 euros per month for a 230 square meter headquarters at number 420 on Avenida Diagonal in Barcelona.

Official sources insisted that the Government is willing to be very scrupulous in the application of the 155 and did not want to make an invasive intervention, to the point of doing only what was included in the decrees. This was the case, for example, with the subsidy for the 62 ‘Casals’ Catalans scattered around the world – including one in Madrid and another in Seville – amounting to one million euros.

The Government was willing to maintain the subsidy for the activities that it considered legal, and which amounted to 635,000 euros, but the Catalan Governing Council refused to cancel those activities, so the entire game was abolished.

The same happened with the workers of the offices abroad, 34 people to whom the central government asked to be sought a relocation in venues that have not undergone changes -such as the network of Acció commercial offices or the Ramon Llull Institute-, but the people in charge of the Conselleria who directed Romeva refused and finally they were dismissed.

In the closing of these offices, the Government has also encountered another problem, and that is that some lease agreements had clauses that force compensation to owners by rescinding it with amounts equivalent to up to four years. Although they are being renegotiated, the sources admit that compensation will have to be paid up to 60,000 euros.