We've been reporting on several stories here at the Spain Herald that I believe need a little explanation. You may have noticed that the Spain Herald's editorial line is pro-People's Party, pro-Church, pro-free market, and pro-American. It doesn't claim to be unbiased, though it does claim not to make stuff up.

Probably the issue that has spilled the most megabytes around here is the Catalan regional statute of autonomy. This would be the equivalent of a state constitution in the United States, just so we're sort of on the same page. There is a strong interest group in Catalonia that wants greater power for the Catalan regional government, the Generalitat. The PP is directly opposed to greater Catalan autonomy; it supports a strong central government based in Madrid. Elements of the PSOE make nice toward the Catalan nationalists, but most of the party is centralist. However, the Catalan section of the Socialists is in favor of greater regional autonomy, the relatively moderate Catalanist party Convergence and Union wants more autonomy than the PSC, and far-out pro-independence party Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) wants, well, complete independence for Catalonia.

So, anyway, a few months ago the Catalan regional parliament passed this new text for an updated statute of autonomy. which would have shifted a lot of power, especially financial power, to the Generalitat from the Madrid central government. The PSC, CiU, ERC, and the Catalan Communists voted in favor and the PP voted against the text. That meant that the text was then submitted to the Spanish Congress of Deputies in Madrid for its approval. A major problem came up, which was that neither the PP nor most of the PSOE was going to stand for the text the Catalan Parliament had passed, and so the text was going to be voted down and everyone was going to be embarrassed and Zapatero would look incompetent, which is not uncommon on his part.

What happened was that Zapatero got together with CiU (remember? They're the moderate Catalanists) leader Artur Mas in a secret meeting and hashed out a deal that all the Socialists and CiU and the Communists can agree on, in which Catalonia will get somewhat more autonomy and, especially, get to keep more of the taxes paid within the frontiers of the region. This made ERC mad, because they want complete independence and no bowing down to the Spanish yoke. Consequence: Instability in the current Socialist-Communist-ERC Tripartite coalition that governs the Generalitat. So far ERC claims it's not going to bail out of the Tripartite, which I believe, because right now they have a bigger share of power than they would if the PSC changed partners and made friends with Mas and CiU and brought them into the Catalan cabinet.

The status now is that the revised text has still not been passed by the Spanish Congress, but it will be eventually. The PP is very much against the revised statute, and has planned several publicity stunts against it. Everybody else seems like they'll accept it, though, so it's going through.

So why the big fight? Aside from silly symbolism, it comes down to money and power. The more taxes you collect, the more you can spend, and the more patronage you can pass out. The Catalanists want to keep all the tax money they can and hand it out to handcraft workshops in the Pyrenees conducted by unemployed Catalan Studies majors. Those who oppose the statute want to keep all the tax money they can and hand it out to unemployed Andalusian migrant workers, if they're Socialists, or let the taxpayers keep more of it and split up the rest between the Church and the army, if they're the PP.

That's why I prefer the PP to the other parties. At least if you vote for the PP the people get to keep more of their own money, and the army gets some of it, so we'll have cool weapons at least, Though I'm a militant agnostic, I guess the Church is about as good a destination for the rest of the money as, say, lesbian holistic health massage therapy or whatever else the government would spend it on.