That's what Deep Throat told Woodward and Bernstein in the (highly-fictionalized) movie All the President's Men, and that's all you have to do to figure out the brouhaha over the Catalan statute of autonomy. Now, you have to remember that Catalonia is one of the most prosperous and most populated regions of Spain, with almost seven million people. These people have a high standard of living and plan to keep it.

Catalan nationalists have historically claimed that being tied to Spain drags it down, that Catalonia would be generally better-off if it weren't chained to poorer areas such as Galicia, Extremadura, and Andalusia. They say that they spend more money propping up the rest of Spain than the benefits of being part of Spain are worth, and therefore they want independence. Cold and simple, that's the economic reasoning behind Catalan nationalism.

That's why prime minister Zapatero's deal with Catalan nationalists Convergence and Union very specifically states that the Catalan regional government, the Generalitat, will co-manage the tax-collecting agency in Catalonia, and that 50% of the income-tax revenues and VAT revenues collected in Catalonia will go directly to the Catalan government, in addition to 58% of the excise taxes on tobacco, alcohol, and fuels.

Sweet deal for the Catalan government. They were willing to give up on most of the blatantly unconstiutional symbolic-nationalist aspects of the statute passed by the Catalan parliament in exchange for the solid promise of a larger pork-barrel.

Sweet deal for CiU. They got what they wanted, more government cash passed out here in Catalonia, and in addition they've moved closer to the Socialists while pushing ERC away.

Sweet deal for the Socialists. Zapatero gets to look like a dealmaker, a compromiser.

The losers are ERC and the PP. ERC loses influence to CiU by opposing the deal, and the PP looks intransigent for doing the same thing.

If I were the PP what I'd do is say, "All right, we'll sign onto these terms under the explicit condition that this is the absolute last demand for more autonomy and more power over the purse-strings." That's the most important thing to do when dealing with nationalist demands, stop the slippery slope.

If the PP agrees to the deal, then it suddenly looks like the reasonable moderate party. And if the nationalists don't agree to the condition, it will prove once and for all that they are dishonest in claiming their long-term goal is not Catalan independence. In politics, the group forced into the position of saying No looks bad. Put the nationalists in that position.

Look at the political mess that one party's constantly saying No has made in the United States. The Democrats do nothing but oppose everything Bush and the Republicans do. They take the maxim, "The duty of the opposition is to oppose," much too far. The Democrats look angry, mean, whiny, pessimistic, like losers, and that's why they turn off the American people and why the Republicans keep winning elections. (By the way, Official Iberian Notes Big Prediction #1 is that the Republicans will keep control of both houses of Congress after the November 2006 congressional elections.)

The PP needs to take just the opposite tack. It needs to be seen as the efficient, competent party that gets things done, as it did under the Aznar administration. It needs to be the party with a positive message to the people, saying, "We're going to cut taxes, make the educational system function again, prevent crime by locking up offenders, reduce bureaucratic meddling, oppose tinhorn dictators, and defeat ETA." Continual opposition to everything Zapatero does isn't going to win nearly as many votes as turning the tables on Zapatero and looking like moderate compromisers with a real platform would.

See, this General Mena shooting off his mouth thing has done some harm to the PP, which was seen as having been too slow to condemn Mena's meddling in politics. You've got to continually prove you're really a democratic party in Spain if you're conservative. I know it's unfair, but you have to do it.

Don't get nervous, we've still got two more years until the election. Build an image that gives the lie to all the Socialist slander about the PP's commitment to democracy, and start constructing it now by putting a permanent brake on the slippery slope towards Catalan separatism.