Civ 15 low

Catalan International View

Issue 15 • Summer 2013 • € 5

A European Review of the World

Power transition periods and the rise of China

by Lluc López-Vidal

The Tories and the EU

by Marc Gafarot

The future of infrastructures

by Salvador Alemany

Asia, in Barcelona’s sights

by Miquel Mateu

Interview: Montserrat Carulla by Eva Piquer Cover Artist: Tatiana Blanqué

SECTIONS: Europe · Business, Law & Economics · The Americas · Africa Asia · Green Debate · Opinion · A Short Story from History The Artist · Universal Catalans · A Poem

Contents

Editor

Víctor Terradellas

vterradellas@catmon.cat Director

Positive & Negative

Francesc de Dalmases

4......... Serbia, the evolution of a European Democracy .......... The Spanish government’s attempts at censorship at Georgetown

Quim Milla

To Our Readers

director@international-view.cat Art Director

designer@international-view.cat Head of International Relations

5.........

Europe

Marc Gafarot

marcgafarot@catmon.cat

Editorial Board

Martí Anglada Enric Canela Salvador Cardús August Gil-Matamala Montserrat Guibernau Guillem López-Casasnovas Manuel Manonelles Fèlix Martí Eva Piquer Ricard Planas Vicent Sanchis Pere Torres Montserrat Vendrell Carles Vilarrubí Vicenç Villatoro

6.........

12........

16........

20........

An interconnected world

by Víctor Terradellas

Grillo: Italy’s hopes for change go up in smoke

by Sandra Buxaderas

Cutting Europe

by Carme Colomina

Getting to know Europe in Catalan

by Natàlia Boronat

The Tories and the EU, from ‘more or less’ to ‘in or out’

by Marc Gafarot

Business, Law and Economics

28........ The future of infrastructures: connectivity and competitiveness

by Salvador Alemany

34........ Globalization and the certainty of economic transactions

by Joan Ramon Rovira and Jordi Sellarés

The Americas Chief Editor

Judit Aixalà Jordi Fexas

Language Advisory Service

Nigel Balfour Júlia López Coordinator

Ariadna Canela

coordinator@international-view.cat Webmaster

Gemma Lapedriza Cover Art

Tatiana Blanqué The reproduction of the artwork on the front cover is thanks to an agreement between the Artist and Fundació CATmón Executive Production Headquarters, Administration and Subscriptions

Fonollar, 14 08003 Barcelona Catalonia (Europe) Tel.: + 34 93 533 42 38 Fax: + 34 93 319 22 24 www. international-view.cat Legal deposit

B-26639-2008 ISSN

2013-0716

© Edicions de la Fundació CATmón. All rights reserved. Neither this publication nor any part of it may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, protocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of Edicions de la Fundació CATmón.

Printed in Catalonia by

Vanguard gràfic Published quarterly

40........ Obama and arms: challenges at home, challenges abroad

by Jordi Armadans

Africa

44........ Sand, uranium and terrorism

by Jordi Fexas

48........ Tunisia: a Mediterranean journey towards democratic reform

by Tayssir Azouz

Asia

52........ China, ‘beyond index’

by Iris Mir

56........ Power transition periods and the rise of China

by Lluc López-Vidal

Interview

60.......

Montserrat Carulla

by Eva Piquer

Opinion

68........ ‘What’s up with Catalonia?’, more than a book

by Liz Castro

Green Debate

72........ The illegal exploitation of Congolese coltan

by Iris Boadella

Barcelona Echoes

76........ Asia, in Barcelona’s sights

by Miquel Mateu

Universal Catalans

80........ Pere Casaldàliga

by Jaume Botey

A Short Story from History

84..........The Dalmases Embassy and the Case of the Catalans (I) The Artist

86........ Tatiana Blanqué A Poem

88........ The Silent

by Margalida Pons

Catalan International View

Positive & Negative

by Francesc de Dalmases

Serbia, the evolution of a European democracy

The early part of this year has been especially noteworthy due to the dimensions of two symbolic political positions adopted by Serbia. Firstly, on April 25th, the President of Serbia Tomislav Nikolic apologized on behalf of his country for the 1995 Srebrenica massacre that took place during the Bosnian war, in which 8,000 Bosnian Muslims were killed. To quote his exact words, Nikolic said, ‘I kneel and ask for forgiveness for Serbia for the crime committed in Srebrenica’. Secondly, just three days earlier, on April 22nd, under the auspices of the European Union, the Serbian government adopted an agreement for the normalization of relations between Serbia and Kosovo. Both decisions will strengthen Nikolic’s government’s commitment to proceeding with the European integration process, while also accepting the new map of the Balkans following the self-determination processes that have taken place in the region in the last twenty-five years.

The Spanish government’s attempts at censorship at Georgetown University

Professor Clara Ponsatí, Prince of Asturias Chair at Georgetown University, reported that the Spanish government prevented her from continuing in her post due to having expressed opinions in favour of Catalan independence on an Al Jazeera program dedicated to the sovereignty process. This manoeuvre, intended to isolate and silence the voice of Professor Ponsatí, was carried out by Spain’s ambassador in Washington, Ramón Gil Casares. It is worth repeating the words of Jeff Anderson, the head of the department where Professor Ponsatí worked at Georgetown, recalling a conversation with the Spanish ambassador: ‘He made it clear he didn’t share her views, and I said she was free to hold them’. In early May, in answer to a question posed by Convergència i Unió in the Congress of Deputies [Spain’s lower house], the Minister of foreign Affairs, José Manuel García-Margallo, admitted that Professor Ponsatí’s contract has not been renewed due to political reasons and the statements she made on the Al Jazeera program.

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To Our Readers

An interconnected world

by Víctor Terradellas

The butterfly effect is a concept belonging to chaos theory referring to a notion of time relating to the initial conditions within a system. The idea is that, given certain initial circumstances in said chaotic system, the slightest variation in conditions can cause the system to evolve in radically different ways. Thus, a small initial disturbance can generate a significantly greater effect in the medium or long term, thanks to a process of amplification.

I mention this because the spring of 2013 was stained with blood following the collapse of a warehouse engaged in textile manufacturing in Bangladesh.

The tragic outcome was more than a thousand dead and many injured.

We at the CIV have always understood and defended the view, specifically in our editorials, that Europe’s primary mission is to be a model of the promotion, awareness and recognition of basic democratic values. Such values are inseparable from a total respect for human rights in the political, economic and social sense.

It is undeniable that the political tradition resulting from the colonial period led to double standards being applied. Practices which were seen as unacceptable in a European nation were common in the colonies. However, it is also true that we have evolved sufficiently since then to appreciate that the global village in which we now live, in this the twenty-first century, precludes the practice abroad of

that which is seen as unacceptable at home.

For this reason, the deaths in Bangladesh are questioning us. Europe’s projection abroad, which is political, but which is evidently commercial and economic, must be informed by and based on the values of justice, equality and freedom that we wish to be identified with. Therefore, we need to realise that Europe’s quantitatively minority position in the world can only become accepted qualitatively if we develop a unique, determined way of being, behaving and interacting.

Europe and the big European companies have already lost the race for the lowest quote and the cheapest prices.

Instead, it is by exporting a particular concept of Europe, also in the commercial field, that we will stand out and gain supporters and admirers of the European cause.

The brands and businesses involved in the events in Bangladesh, whether directly or indirectly, as well as other European organizations with similar practices in Asia and elsewhere, would do well to understand that our challenge is quality, excellence and the recognition of the rights and duties of everyone with whom we work.

With such a contribution we will truly be able to export Europe, and rather than finding ourselves at the centre of the world we will find ourselves at the centre of global democracy.

It is a position where we should remain.

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Grillo: Italy’s hopes for change go up in smoke

by Sandra Buxaderas*

Italy is still submerged in a political quagmire. The country was called into disrepute by former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who was finally forced to resign in late 2011 thanks to pressure from abroad and the Italian establishment. Italy has remained in this state following parliamentary elections in February of this year. This is not so much due to the outcome, which showed divisions within the electorate and their weariness with the political class, but more for the way in which the parties reacted. Most significantly, the new face on the Italian scene, Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement, has refused to form a coalition with any other political party, thereby blocking the formation of a government capable of renewing the Italian political and economic landscape, leaving the ball firmly in the court of the traditional parties. In practice this has torpedoed the chance for real change in Italy that Grillo himself proclaimed as both essential and urgent.

Nor can it be said the winner of the elections by a whisker, Pier Luigi Bersani, leader of the Democratic Party (PD) and the centre-left coalition, has been particularly cunning. Not only has he been unable to persuade Grillo to join him, but many believe that he had the elections all sewn up and that he lost thanks to his failure to drum up sufficient enthusiasm during the election campaign. In fact, his own party is considering replacing him with the Mayor of Florence, Matteo Renzi.

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He lost in the party’s primaries; however opinion polls now see him as the favourite to lead the centre-left. Furthermore, he also has the sympathies of many centrist voters and those on the right. Bersani had the foresight to suggest a government program to Grillo based on many of the Movement’s demands, which are shared by a large part of the Italian electorate. Nevertheless, he made a serious miscalculation: he was unable to lead the new government himself while also counting on the sup-

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port of the Five Star Movement. As Grillo said, this would have been a ‘trap’ for the movement. However, Grillo has been unwilling to support an alternate leader. The Genoa-born entertainer has refused the proposal made by the President of the Republic, Giorgio Napolitano, of finding a candidate from outside the traditional political arena who could unite the two groups. In short, Grillo flatly refused to share government responsibilities, even parliamentary ones, with the centre-left.

Yet, paradoxically, with Bersani’s stubborn commitment to making a deal with Grillo instead of the centreright Silvio Berlusconi, the former has at least tried to address the desire of a large segment of the electorate to put the Berlusconi years behind them and embark on a new political project.

Thanks to his failure to persuade Grillo, Bersani has drawn attention to the serious limitations of the new movement.

This allows him to reduce Grillo’s chances in the event of an early return Catalan International View

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to the polls, since many of Five Star’s voters have been disappointed by the inflexibility of the movement’s leader.

They reject Grillo’s strategy of refusing a coalition with the other forces in the hope of picking up more votes in any future elections. In fact, for the first time, opinion polls show a decline (by some 2.5 points) in the electorate’s intention to vote for Five Star.

Opinion polls need to be taken with a pinch of salt in Italy, since they are often conducted by calls to a landline telephone, when many of Five Stars’ voters only use a mobile phone.

Nevertheless, there is a noticeable feeling of dissatisfaction among a significant sector of the party’s supporters: the movement has received criticisms on the movement’s website, which Grillo himself acknowledges as valid.

Most tellingly, part of the Five Star’s 8

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parliamentary group rebelled against the leadership. They took advantage of the fact that the vote was secret, to lend their support to Bersani’s candidate for the presidency of the Senate, the renowned former anti-mafia magistrate Pietro Grasso. The dissidents well knew that otherwise Berlusconi’s candidate would have won.

The usual electioneering

Grillo, who portrayed himself as the candidate for change in discredited Italian politics, revealed a dark side that is typical of the traditional politicians he loves to criticise. He has correctly diagnosed many of the problems that hinder the country, but in the end he too has put electoral gains before Italy’s needs.

In spite of the fact that Five Star boasts of its internal democracy, it is evident that the much-hyped participa-

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tion of its members via the internet is not a new way of sharing power horizontally, but rather shows the party is in the hands of a single man, the showman of Genoa, Beppe Grillo. Or rather, two men, because the person who really calls the shots is a character who almost never gives interviews and who always operates behind the scenes: Gianroberto Casaleggio, a businessman from Milan who is in charge of the party’s political marketing and all aspects of Five Star’s internet strategy. The Italians have been surprised by the virulence with which Grillo attacks any internal dissent (which he refers to as ‘digital crap’) and how he threatened parliamentary dissidents who voted for Pietro Grasso. Nevertheless, once he realised that for now he is unable to do anything about the latter, he ended up using more conciliatory tones.

The popular comedian has had some successes that are overshadowed by such failures. On the positive side is the fact that he has finally managed to include on the Italian political agenda issues that affect millions of people, but which did not seem to interest the politicians.

The centre-left leader, Pier Luigi Bersani, lost the election precisely because he was unable to respond to the cries of millions of Italians, mostly under 45 years of age, who were dissatisfied following a decade of a total lack of job opportunities and who are facing a bleak future, in a country that has been accustomed to abundance since the economic miracle that began in the 60s.

Grillo has finally managed to give a voice to the ‘lost generation’, the millions of young and middle-aged Italians who either have precarious employment contracts or who have been forced to emigrate. What is more, he has also channelled the anger of a much broader range of the population towards the political class. In the middle of an economic crisis, the Italians, who have the highest taxes in Europe aside from the Scandinavians, but who generally re-

ceive very poor services from the state, were faced with the Berlusconi government and subsequently Mario Monti’s administration, who did no more than increase taxes. The politicians continually took measures that put families under increasing pressure (the National Institute of Statistics revealed that six out of ten Italians fail to make ends meet), while doing nothing to address exorbitant salaries and remuneration packages which are deemed insulting to the public at large. Meanwhile, the country finds itself in the midst of an economic crisis in spite of its potential (a thousand small and medium-sized businesses close every day), thanks to local governments defaulting on their debts and the high cost of doing business.

The new face on the Italian scene, Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement, has refused to make a pact with any other political party If Grillo has finally managed to put these concerns on the political agenda it is due to some spectacular results, especially if one considers that the Italian media played down his importance. The Five Star Movement is the most voted for party in the Chamber of Deputies, with 25% of the votes (more than 8.6 million), ahead of the PD. However, the PD won the majority of seats thanks to its coalition with the leftist party SEL, as currently under Italian electoral law the majority of seats are automatically granted to the coalition with the most votes. In the Senate, which rewards coalitions that win in the major regions, Five Star won fewer votes, but is still a significant force.

Another point in Grillo’s favour is that his MPs have cut their salaries in half, though they have retained the privCatalan International View

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ileges they had so criticised. Following this example, the President of the Senate Pietro Grasso and the President of the Chamber of Deputies Laura Boldrini, of the PD, have also reduced their salaries by 50%. Moreover, both leaders have also renounced half of their other privileges, exposing the inconsistency of Five Star’s parliamentarians, who could have made greater personal sacrifices to restore the publics’ faith in Italian politics.

Grillo has squandered part of the political capital he had accumulated by appearing to be intractable precisely now, when he is able to right the wrongs he so harshly criticised In addition, Grillo has also squandered part of the political capital he had accumulated by appearing to be intractable precisely now, when he is able to right the wrongs he so harshly criticised. In Italy, a country with serious political divisions and a complicated history, Grillo’s impassioned and insulting tones do Italy no favours.

They might have been justified to help him gain attention, but not now that he has so much responsibility. He never refers to Berlusconi by name, preferring the nickname ‘Psycho Dwarf ’ and has called Bersani the ‘Walking Dead’. It is not only disrespectful to the politicians themselves, but to the voters who voted for them. Grillo fails to understand what democracy is all about. He systematically dismisses the other two major Italian political parties. In late March, for example he said of them,

‘We are in the field of psychiatry, rather than politics (...) They need to understand that, for them, the game is over.

They should all go home. A psychiatrist needs to put their arm round them and whisper softly in their ear “it’s over”’.

He added, ‘These people have failed to understand who the public are (...) We are new people, it’s the French Revolution without the guillotine, a miracle the whole world is watching’.

One has to admit that the election results have been impressive: coming from nowhere to becoming the leading political party in the Chamber of Deputies. This is precisely why many voters, even those who vote for other parties, listened favourably to Grillo’s criticisms of Italy’s political leaders and economic situation. The showman ought to have realised that this force should now be used to build rather than to continue to tear down. That it should be put to the service of the country. Five Star’s leaders shouldn’t act like clowns since they now form part of the political class who have agreed to play by the rules. Otherwise, when it comes to political rabble-rousers, Grillo is facing a past master, the leader of the Italian right, Silvio Berlusconi, who obtained respectable results in the elections thanks to electoral pledges based on the manipulation of reality.

Attacking a housing tax which he himself had introduced as prime minister, for example, by passing it off as Mario Monti’s initiative. Opinion polls show that when Grillo loses support it ends up in the hands of Berlusconi. Not only has Grillo failed to put an end to the enemy he said he wanted to put out of circulation, he’s given it a helping hand.

*Sandra Buxaderas A journalist based in Rome. She covers Italian and Vatican current affairs for the Catalan daily Avui and Rac1 radio station, and writes a blog on Italy. She has been the EU and NATO correspondent for Avui, Rac1 and El Temps in Brussels. She has also worked for the Spanish weekly Tiempo in Madrid, Público newspaper, Spanish National Radio and COPE Radio in Barcelona and Mallorca, among other organisations. She was the head of International Communications for the Foreign Affairs Secretariat of the Catalan Government. Buxaderas is founder and former president of Aasara, a charity which helps street children in India.

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Tel. +34 977 757 473 · +34 977 756 265 • Fax +34 977 771 129 Camí Pedra Estela, 34 • 43205 Reus (Baix Camp) www.demuller.es

Europe

Cutting Europe

by Carme Colomina*

The debate currently raging within the EU as to the community’s budget for the next seven years is much more than a discussion about figures relating to revenues and expenses. Political priorities are being questioned, aid to territorial cohesion is being cut, the budgets of the EU’s institutions are being reduced, Brussels’ room for manoeuvre is shrinking and the contributions of member states to the EU coffers are being further limited. The EU is about to take out a mortgage which will mark its future until 2020; an austerity package that may well continue beyond the economic crisis.

On the 8th February, after a marathon 26 hours of negotiations, the President of the European Council Herman van Rompuy emerged to announce the ‘best possible deal’. He must have known full well the budget was not what a Europe in crisis needed, hit by unemployment and recession. The 27 heads of state and government had just 12

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decided that a larger EU (of at least 28 states, since Croatia is to be a member), with more power than ever and in the middle of a growth crisis, is to have less money in the bank with which to invest over the next seven years. A “Europe of cutbacks” won the day. A Europe of net contributors who want to limit their community bill. The Europe of the

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north wanted a summit of budgetary rigor, but eventually David Cameron’s Eurosceptic vision prevailed.

Just two weeks earlier, the British prime minister had announced the UK wanted to renegotiate its status within the EU as it increasingly feels it is removed from the core group which takes the major decisions. Britain warned

that by 2017 it will hold a referendum to decide whether or not it will remain part of the Union. Cameron arrived in Brussels armed with the arguments of his party’s hardliners, calling for European civil servants to lose their privileges and calling for the first time in the EU’s 56-year history for the budget to be decreased (there will now be 4% Catalan International View

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less money with respect to previous periods). Cameron came out the winner.

‘We can’t work until 2020 with figures from 2005’, proclaimed the President of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz. Yet even the European Parliament, which has joint decision-making powers to approve the future budget and which has rejected the budgets designed by the heads of state and governments in a majority vote, sees itself as unable to touch the ceiling of money and only aspires to amending its distribution.

The debate on the EU’s accounts is the proof that there is still no political or intellectual alternative to a concept of a single Europe, the concept of German rigor

A political message

An amount less than 1% of the 27’s GDP, around a trillion euros, is the quantity of money that is being discussed in these agonising negotiations.

The debate on the EU’s accounts is the proof that there is still no political or intellectual alternative to a single concept of Europe, the concept of German rigor. It is not just a matter of numbers.

A tiny budget is an important political message. It is the states (or the vision of certain states) which rule in Brussels. And this obsession with austerity is increasingly distancing Europe from the United States. The new US Treasury Secretary, Jacob J. Lew, appearing in Berlin in mid-April during his European tour, argued that an increase in public spending and a more flexible monetary policy have helped the United States to recover at a faster rate than the Old Continent. The German Finance Minister, Wolfgang Schauble, who sat beside him, replied: ‘Here in 14

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Europe nobody sees a contradiction between fiscal consolidation and growth’.

There is a debate, however. The failure of rescue plans in the form of austerity and cuts that have served to make Portugal and Greece fall into even deeper recessions, add to the debate.

‘The narrative that the solution will be the sum of 27 national austerity programs is a big mistake’, claimed the former Portuguese minister and president of the Notre Europe Foundation, Antonio Vitorino, speaking in Barcelona in early April. ‘We need a quid pro quo EU’, where the countries least affected by the crisis make policies that compensate for those forced to implement more severe reforms and austerity measures. However, currently no such reciprocal vision exists, and the main mechanism for compensating economic and social inequalities within the European Union is via community funds with an increasingly tighter budget.

‘Every euro invested from the EU budget attracts three euros from the private sector’, according to the French President, François Hollande, speaking at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, just a couple of days before the summit. ‘Savings, yes; weakening the economy, no’, proclaimed Hollande to the applause of the MEPs. However, once in Brussels, the French argument failed to find support.

Hollande’s isolation

François Hollande’s political weakness has become a European problem. The Franco-German balance has broken and ended up slowing down the entire EU project. The French president has been defeated in every meeting and his defence of European growth, which led to his electoral victory, has come to nothing. The French economy is under threat and Paris has no influential political allies in Europe. This became clear in the hours before the summit. Before

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the meeting of the 27, the President of the Council Herman van Rompuy’s first manoeuvre together with President of the European Commission Jose Manuel Barroso, was to organize a meeting with the heavyweights in the negotiations. Angela Merkel was there. David Cameron too. According to a European official in a report in a British newspaper, they tried to contact Hollande by phone for over an hour and ‘he didn’t even answer’. According to French diplomatic sources speaking after the meeting, however, they ‘did not receive any such invitation’.

Paris knew that the cuts were inevitable and it could only hope to try to save the revenue it still receives through Common Agricultural Policy subsidies.

In contrast, the Europe of austerity measures made the cuts by reducing as much as possible those sectors that ought to help restore economic growth (infrastructure, research and innovation, energy and transportation, the internet). The eternal dilemma between the policies of the past and the future.

To maintain aid to the cohesion funds while failing to invest in the modernization of the European economy only serves to ensure that the divide between debtor countries and creditor countries will continue to widen. This is not only an austerity budget, it is also a cowardly budget because it has once more avoided a thorough reform of income and expenditure, of how to equitably distribute the money in Brussels.

The self-appointed ‘Friends of Better Spending’ (countries intent on limiting EU spending) may have secured a victory by getting the EU to tighten its

belt, but in contrast to what their name suggests, they have not even tried to negotiate a modernization of the budget, its composition or the resources with which it is financed. Less investment rather than more effective investment.

‘We’ve mortgaged Europe’s future until 2020’, bemoaned a former European minister.

With such limited institutional leeway, what will politics with a capital ‘p’ make of it? Who will look after the interests of the Union? The EU has been caught in a clash of legitimacy. Economic policy is imposed by the EU institutions, while the governments which have been bailed out are unsure when it comes to deciding who they must answer to first. Fear and vulnerability make democratically elected governments believe that they must first answer to the will of Brussels before their own electorate. But what is Brussels?

Berlin is now the EU’s centre of gravity. EU institutions have accepted the role of technical facilitators of policies that are dictated by Germany. When the 27 take joint decisions on behalf of the whole EU, under the leadership of a president who they themselves have chosen, are they defending the interests of their country or those of the whole EU? François Hollande put it clearly in Strasbourg: ‘Nowadays the threat no longer comes from market uncertainty but from the people’. The European Union has not only lost economic credibility, more significantly it has lost political credibility. Now all we need is for this inebriated, triple-A Europe, which continues to dictate the prescription to overcome the crisis, to realise it. *Carme Colomina

A journalist specialising in the present day European Union. She has been with Catalunya Ràdio for more than fourteen years, where she has been the Brussels correspondent, head of the International Section and News sub-editor. She is a member of Team Europe of the European Commission for Catalonia and the Balearics and the Catalan branch of the European Journalists Association. Currently she works for different media organisations and workshops on communication and the European Union.

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Getting to know Europe in Catalan

by Natàlia Boronat*

In March of this year, St. Petersburg hosted the Second International Meeting of Students and Teachers of Catalan Abroad. The four-day event was attended by some fifty people who had an opportunity to explore Russia’s northern capital as well as aspects of Russian and Catalan culture thanks to a busy schedule of visits, activities and conferences.

Jordi Gimeno, a Catalan teacher who is part of the Assistantship Network of the Institut Ramon Llull at the University of Szeged in Hungary, and one of the organizers of the first meeting, explained that, ‘the main objective behind meeting in different cities and getting to know Europe in Catalan is to provide more reasons to learn Catalan by doing activities which are fun and appealing to students’. Gimeno believes in things which are ‘quick and easy’ and explains that the network is used for students from various countries to make friends in Catalan and see that they are not alone in learning the language. These seminars are organized without any financial support, but Gimeno points out that, ‘the upside of not having funding is that you’re not indebted to anyone’.

The initiative’s main objective is to ‘teach students other functions of the language through Catalan, not only the linguistic aspect’ ‘Motivation is essential for learning any language’, according to philologist Alba Codina, lecturer in Catalan at the Moscow State University and joint organizer of the St. Petersburg meeting together with Anna Brases. Codina ex16

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plains that the initiative’s main objective is to ‘teach students other functions of the language through Catalan, not only the linguistic aspect but also the sociocultural and how thanks to a language one can get to know the culture it forms part of as well as other cultures, since they meet people from different countries, in this case the Russian culture’.

The students played a very active role in the meeting, especially those from Moscow and St. Petersburg, since they had to prepare the visits in Catalan, translate Russian poetry into Catalan for the recitals and also serve as interpreters at the various museums. In doing so, as Codina sees it they, ‘work on another function of the language, mediating between speakers of different languages and at the same time learning about Russian culture’.

Nadia Pristavko and Valeria Kopteva are two 20-year olds from St. Petersburg, in their fourth year as philology students. They were delighted with their role as hosts of the meeting and having the opportunity to tell everyone about their city and be understood in Catalan. Pristavko began to study Catalan by ‘sheer chance’, but now she is unable to stop because, ‘first the teacher, Anna Brases, then her visits, her friends, the culture, the writers, the music... everything draws you in’. For Kopteva it was also, ‘a complete accident that has led to us organising this cultural exchange

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that allows me to meet so many people’. Both girls realise that learning Catalan and also Galician has changed their idea of the Iberian Peninsula and they are now trying to change the stereotypes that people have of the Spain of flamenco and bullfighting by speaking about the political and cultural diversity that exists.

Alex Smitchenko has attended both meetings and values them as, ‘a highly positive experience because Catalan opens doors which were otherwise closed. I had never been to Hungary before and I discovered Budapest thanks to Catalan which I now think of as a language of international communication. Here, for example, we are from nine different countries and it’s what unites us’. Alex’s friend Inari Listenmaa is also participating in the meeting. They met at a linguistic campus in Mallorca and Andorra and she is a student of computational linguistics in Finland.

Many of the students of Catalan in Russia will be philologists in the future, but there are always exceptions.

Svetlana Rudnik, a fifth-year History student at the Moscow State University, was responsible during the meeting of giving a presentation in Catalan on Moscow and St. Petersburg. In her first year Rudnik began studying Spanish and gradually looked deeper into all aspects of the Hispanic world and became curious when her teacher told

them that, ‘there are others languages in the Iberian Peninsula that mustn’t be ignored when we speak about Spain and the country’s linguistic situation’.

In her third year Rudnik chose to specialize in contemporary Spanish history and the tutor decided that for her dissertation she should write about the 2006 Statute of Catalonia. As a result she decided to learn Catalan. Rudnik explains that the Statute is translated into Russian but in order to conduct an objective study a knowledge of Catalan is essential to understanding the parliamentary reports and the opinions of experts. Two years ago Rudnik’s rationale for studying Catalan was to have access to original sources, but then she realised that, ‘to write about the Statute, or anything else about a country, you need to know the culture, the way of thinking and lifestyle of the people you’re talking about, their mentality... and the Catalan International View

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language lets you get closer to all this.

This 21-year old Russian has completed the history of the 2006 Statute up to its parliamentary approval and is now working on, ‘the second part of the ordeal, relating to the resources of the PP, the Ombudsman, certain autonomous regions and of course, the Constitutional Court’s ruling’.

The State University of Moscow began to offer classes in Catalan in 1978, out of gratitude to the controversial figure of Joan Antoni Samaranch Catalan students in Russia now have a much easier time learning the language than they used to. Now there are the two language assistants from the Institut Ramon Llull, one in Moscow and the other in St. Petersburg as well as other centres that teach Catalan; the possibility of obtaining grants for summer camps; the student exchange programme between Moscow State and St. Petersburg Universities and the University of Barcelona; and the opportunities for language learning that the internet provide. Moreover, Catalonia is currently very popular in Russia as a tourist destination. It receives 70% of the Russian tourists who visit Spain, and is the third most-visited destination for Russians after Turkey and Egypt. In 2012, some 745,000 tourists from the Russian Federation visited Catalonia. The political climate has also helped make things easier. For many years the Soviet Union and Franco’s Spain were both isolated countries and theoretically ideologically opposed, circumstances which did little to encourage Russians to get to know the cultural and linguistic diversity of the Spanish state.

The St. Petersburg State University, which hosted the event, has a long tra18

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dition of Catalan Studies, many works have been translated into Russian and Catalan has been taught since 1978.

With the restoration of diplomatic relations between post-Franco Spain and the Soviet Union in 1977 the Department of Spanish did not feel as threatened as it did in the fifties and was able to undertake new activities. In accordance with the policy adopted by the Department of Romance Philology of conducting comparative studies of Romance languages, the university began to teach the theory and practice of Catalan. A native Catalan teaching assistant has worked there since 1989, with the post being the responsibility of the Institut Ramon Llull since 2002.

Olga Nikolayeva, professor of Spanish at the State University of St. Petersburg, is doing her doctoral thesis on Salvador Espriu, having based her dissertation on this renowned Catalan poet in 1994, and having participated in the 2003 International Symposium dedicated to him in Barcelona and Arenys de Mar. Nikolayeva recalls the time when she was a student at the same centre: ‘I began to study Catalan in the early 90’s in classes given by Arantzazu Fonts, a teacher from Reus. She was the first person I met from Spain and obviously she told me about the way of life and customs of her country, Catalonia. That’s how I learnt how to appreciate this country that is both real and magical at the same time’. The teacher and the student became friends and Nikolayeva discovered Espriu thanks to a record by Raimon that Fonts gave her.

The driving force and assistance which led to the State University of Moscow beginning to offer classes in Catalan, also in 1978, as well as a large library, came from the controversial figure of Joan Antoni Samaranch, who at the time was Spain’s ambassador to the Soviet Union. Marina Abramova, Professor of Literature at Moscow State University and one of the greatest trans-

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lators of Russian to Catalan remembers Samaranch as, ‘a person who came across as a real Catalan nationalist’. She was very surprised when she went to Catalonia and was told who he was and his relationship with the Franco regime.

Abramova began studying Catalan in 1978, the year she began her doctorate. It was suggested she do a course in Catalan literature and that she also do her doctoral thesis on Tirant lo Blanc.

Since then Catalan literature has been a real passion. With the opening up of Russia following perestroika in the mid 80’s, Abramova made her first trip to Catalonia in 1988, returning many times since on holiday and for study visits. Tirant lo Blanc has accompanied Abramova for much of her life as she is one of four people who worked for ten

years on the Russian translation. Thanks to this work, which Abramova recalls as ‘an enormous and exciting undertaking’ she was paid $300 with which she bought a carpet for her hallway.

Thirty-five years later, Abramova fondly recalls the suggestion to take the first course of Catalan literature in Moscow, something she was to do for 20 years. It was ‘a gift of fate’, at a time when the Soviet Union was still very closed to the outside world. Due to certain parallels that can be drawn between the Franco regime and Stalinism, Abramova immediately began to feel very close to Catalan literature and the classes were, ‘a good way to express our problems, because behind everything we were told you could also see our own history’. *Natàlia Boronat

She holds a degree in Information Sciences from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and in Slavic Philology from the Universitat de Barcelona. Since 2001 she has spent most of her time in Russia.

She worked in St. Petersburg as a Catalan lecturer at the State University and in the tourism industry. She now lives in Moscow, where she works as a freelance journalist for different Catalan media organisations and reports on the current situation in the post-Soviet arena.

Europe

The Tories and the EU, from ‘more or less’ to ‘in or out’

by Marc Gafarot*

The European problem has always been a problem

‘The whole map of Europe has been changed... but as the deluge subsides and the waters fall short we see the dreary steeples of Fermanagh and Tyrone emerging once again’. Thus proclaimed Winston Churchill in 1922 underlying the fact that following the carnage and epoch-defining events of the Great War the perennial problem of Ireland would be exactly that, perennial. If we jump forward 90 years we see that for another Conservative leader, following a return to government after 13 years in the political wilderness, another perennial dilemma has resurfaced to trouble him and cause him the same worries which beset the premierships of two other Tory Prime Ministers.

The perennial question which David Cameron has been asked to answer is 20

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the United Kingdom’s place in and relationship with the European Union.

It is clear that the UK’s relationship with the EU has always been ambivalent. It is a relationship which seeks to balance national interest with many of those characteristics which make up British exceptionalism. Her administrative and military history, her political and cultural peculiarities, her ties to the Commonwealth, the ‘special relationship’ with the US as well as the common law tradition are a few of the facets of the UK which affect how the European Union is perceived and how its elite have engaged with this unique model of cooperation among nation states. In contrast to other member states the European Union has never been viewed by the majority of UK policy makers, nor for that matter by the wider population, as a vehicle for national renewal.

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Rather its benefits are always couched in present-day economic and geopolitical terms, not ideological ones. Opposition to the European Union within the UK (while listing the political, economic and social effects of membership) is of a more decidedly ideological nature.

This is an opposition which has grown, which has hardened, which is widespread among the population and one that finds some of its most vocal advocates within the Conservative Party.

The Tories: making Europe and dividing themselves

Things have changed since the days when it was the Conservative Party which called the shots on Europe. It was Harold Macmillan who made the first overtures to the then EEC in spite of an imperialist rump in his party as well as opposition from Labour and

lukewarm public opinion. The economic rationale and newfound needs of a post-war UK in decline pointed the way to finally joining the party, albeit in a half-hearted and tardy manner. This ambivalence married with other aspects of Gallic national selfinterest led to Charles de Gaulle’s veto of 1963. It would take another decade for another Tory, Edward Heath, to sign up to the Common Market. It has become part of the black legend of the EU, as recounted by Eurosceptics, that Heath lied to the British people by not explaining the full political and constitutional implications of membership. In truth, he stressed the economic aspects of membership over and above other considerations. The deal the UK achieved, particularly relating to the budget and the CAP, was a sub-optimal one primarily as a result of a negotiation Catalan International View

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strategy which favoured a quick as possible accession to the exclusion of other factors. Heath’s election defeat in 1974 removed the most pro-European prime minister the UK has ever had. His successor as party leader, Margaret Thatcher supported remaining in the EEC in the 1975 referendum that was called by Harold Wilson, the then Labour Prime Minister, in order to placate and deal with divisions in his own party over the EEC. Following defeat at the polls in 1979 and with a swing to the left, Labour eventually supported withdrawal from the Common Market in its 1983 election manifesto. The Conservative administration was thus seen as the ‘European’ party. However the divisions that had beset Wilson were as nothing compared with what Thatcher and Major were to encounter and which continue to haunt the current Conservative Prime Minister.

Thatcher’s policy towards Europe would ultimately prove to be one of the major factors in her downfall and created a bitterness that lasted a generation

Thatcher’s policy towards Europe would ultimately prove to be one of the major factors in her downfall and created a bitterness that lasted a generation. Her approach was more complex than legend would have us believe. The arguments over the budget in the early eighties gave way to clear cooperation over the Single European Act. She was more than happy to see a market-friendly Europe. It was the spectre of a social, monetary and political EEC that would cost her many senior ministers, divisions within the cabinet and open warfare in her ranks.

The debates over the ERM and her 22

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clashes with Jacques Delors became part of her mythology as was her ‘No, No, No’ to the Commission’s plans for the EEC’s future and what she saw as socialism by the back door. Her former chancellor and foreign secretary, Geoffrey Howe’s resignation over her European policy in 1990 finally precipitated her ruin. The division between distinct Europhiles and Eurosceptics would also play its part in derailing the Major administration.

In hindsight John Major played a stroke of genius by negotiating and ratifying the Maastricht treaty, securing as he did an opt out on the Social Chapter and the single currency. Yet there remained much acrimony among many MPs due to how it was pushed through parliament. The debacle surrounding the UK’s exit from the ERM at the end of 1992 only added to the chagrin of the euro malcontents. This group began, with the support of much of the press, to ridicule Major’s pragmatic ‘wait and see’ policy over the EMU. By 1997 the Major administration was exhausted by the constant in-fighting and lack of discipline; a new, clean, pro-European Labour was to take full advantage of the Tory division and destroy them politically. There was no contrition on the part of those within his party who Major had called the ‘bastards’. This group of reactionary neo-liberals fanatics had one of the leading roles in the Conservative party’s dance of death, with anti Europeanism being their favourite tune.

One Nation is dead, long live stupidity

One Nationism is a school of thought which is peculiar to British Conservatism. Its architect, the 19th Century Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli believed that social division and strife should be avoided and ameliorated by a concerned patrician class. In the following century many Tories shared a belief

Europe

in social cohesion, the role of strong institutions, obligations of classes to one another, reasoned organic change and pragmatism all anchored to a specifically British view of community. The cataclysm of 1997 saw the removal from the ranks of MPs, through retirement or by defeat, of the last of the One Nation Tories who made up the Europhile wing of the Conservative Party. They had entered the Commons in the 1950s, 60s and 70s and many had firsthand experience of the destruction of the continent during the war. They had witnessed the end of the post-war social consensus, they had even served in Thatcher’s governments yet they had retained the pragmatic sense of nation, borne mainly from the class from which they came.

Ideological extremism is not a charge that could ever have been levelled at them. Their Europeanism, whilst sincere, was always tempered with good sense and reasoned argument. Thus the party which emerged into the Blair dominated decade was a party that through both design and as a result of New Labour now having stolen many of their clothes was one which seemed to have abandoned the middle ground.

Their choice for leader was between the former chancellor Kenneth Clark, the last senior One Nation member in the Commons and the immature Thatcherite William Hague. The clear victory of Hague was in large part due more to Clark’s unapologetic business-like support for the European project rather than the other’s questionable ability. No Tory could have defeated Blair in 2001, yet the spectacle of Hague leading the campaign as a referendum on the Euro seemed small-minded and parochial.

His refrain to ‘save the pound’ was seen by the electorate as an irrelevance, and the outcome for him would be that the he would be the first Conservative leader in 80 years not to have been prime minister. This exclusive group of Tory

leaders who failed to reach Number 10 became even less exclusive as two other leaders with impeccable Eurosceptic credentials (Iain Duncan Smith and Michael Howard) failed to defeat the all conquering political destroyer that was New Labour. One Nation was dead and what was left was a party seen as marginalised and irrelevant; not a party of government. For the Conservative Party this was rare, though not unknown.

With an institution as old as the Conservative Party one is able to observe patterns in its long history which have repeated themselves for over two centuries. A pattern emerges of ascendency, division and stupidity.

For much of its existence the Conservative Party has sought to represent in deeds and manners a particular idea both of what the UK is and how it should be ruled. This is the Conservative Party as the natural party of government, united, pragmatic and electorally effective. For long periods of the 20th century this was the case, the earthquake of Blairism though shallow in content was profound in its ability to push the Tories from the middle ground towards stupidity.

Stupidity is a disease that the Tories have always been susceptible to since the time of John Stewart Mill who had them in mind when he employed the word. Stupidity in this context is understood as ignoring electoral survival, taking extreme positions, refusing to accept change as opposed to managing change. This stupidity is a constant threat; it lies below the surface and can flare up at any time. The genius of the Conservative Party was to act as a broad coalition of interest which could coalesce around unwritten rules about how best to manage the difficult balance of government; extremism distracted from the business of ruling. In short if the Tories Catalan International View

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are not in government their raison d’être ceases to exist, stupidity leads to opposition and Tories are not suited to being a pressure group. This was the case for Toryism until 1997, when even with the Thatcher revolution, the Tories could always seek, feel, persuade and win over the middle ground. Following Blair’s victory the Tories’ failure to win led them into the trap of thinking that by making themselves more and more distinct they would win over their lost voters. However, thirteen years of opposition proved them wrong; they became a caricature of the present day US Republican Party. Division is the third part of this complex historical trinity. The repeal of agricultural protection in the 1840s and tariff reform in the 1900s split the party, leading to electoral defeat and isolation. The division over Europe from the late 1980s onwards has gone a great way to creating both stupidity and division. Granted, ‘Europe’ was not the sole reason for defeat but its effects have been less than benign. However a gradual final purge of the Europhiles during opposition has in some ways resolved any divisions by removing them altogether.

Though Cameron has sought political capital by adopting a robust stance towards the EU, this is still not enough for many Ascendency and a new division

Thus in 2005 David Cameron inherited an old and confused party that he sought to bring into the 21st century, accepting if not the content, then at least that the manner of political discourse had changed. In seeking ascendency Cameron needed to keep stupidity in 24

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check and pray for unity. By wining office and creating the first peace-time coalition since the 1930s, Cameron has shown himself as a pragmatist. He has modernised, said the right things and was able to capitalise on the situation as the Brown administration finally gave way under the fatigue induced by the failures in the UK’s public finances.

Cameron has made the Tories a viable party of government and he showed considerable elan and skill in forming a coalition which had seemed more than improbable on polling day in 2010. Like many of the current Tory hierarchy, he is a professional politician (something rare a generation ago) and he comes from Thatcherite and Eurosceptic roots though he is not beholden to an ideal of ideological constraints.

Like his European partners, his main preoccupation in government has been the economy and the debt crisis yet the EU, like the steeples of Ulster, re-emerged in 2010 and has caused him headaches and goes a long way in explaining his approach to the EU. It must be remembered that the core of his party are by nature, inclination and in practice predominantly Eurosceptic, something mirrored by the parliamentary party. As with Major and Thatcher they are more than keen to have their opinions aired. Even though Cameron has sought political capital by adopting a robust stance with the EU, this is still not enough for many. A new division has replaced the old one. Where once the debate was between more or less integration, for or against the Euro we now have a simple split: in or out.

The majority of Tory MPs lean towards an exit of the current EU. Heath had warned Major that any attempt to placate and appease the Eurosceptics would fail in that they would never be satisfied. We can see this in those rebellions by MPs over an ‘in-out’ referendum in 2011 and one in relation

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to EU budget cuts in 2012 as well innumerable statements by many senior Conservatives favouring exit from the community. Thus Conservative politicians, members, and voters are making things difficult for a government which has historically been the most Eurocautious since accession.

Much of this division and antipathy towards the EU is manifested in the growth of UKIP which beat the Tories to third place in a recent byelection. UKIP is having a sizeable impact in Tory heartlands which could well tip the balance in a close election.

Some Tory MPs have made overtures to UKIP with the intention of creating an electoral pact. These were dismissed and opposed by the leadership but the mere fact that several MPs are willing to openly discuss such things is telling.

Issues of immigration, labour relations, unpopular human rights legislation and social policy all have a significant Euro-

pean dimension; a dimension that both UKIP and the Tory right are more than willing to remind the government and the popular press.

In opposition Cameron promised a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty and a repeal of the Human Rights Act of 1998 which incorporated the European Convention on Human Rights into English law as well as ceasing to sit with the European People’s Party in the European Parliament. In office he has made three significant and bold moves on EU policy. In 2011 he vetoed treaty changes which were requested by other member states in relation to fiscal rules to deal with the debt crisis; the same action was also linked to Cameron’s opposition to a financial transaction tax. Second was his push for a reduction in the EU budget which he hailed in February with a 3% cut. Finally on the 23rd January 2013 he promised the holy grail for the EuCatalan International View

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rosceptics, a referendum, albeit one on a renegotiated settlement and only after a general election. Whether his vision for an EU of the single market not the single currency and one of 28 speeds is achievable, it is one which is acceptable, in the meantime, to his party and is popular in the UK. He realises the need for EU membership and in any case he would push for an ‘in’ vote; but this lies in the future. His hope for now is that Europe can be used to mark himself out from both Labour and the LibDems, not from his MPs; for them he prays for silence.

Europe was, and can still be, toxic for the Tories; nothing is more guaranteed to animate their ranks than twelve stars on a blue background.

It is in this context of Tory survival that we should understand Cameron’s EU politics. Like his more successful predecessors he is a realist, and unlike many in his party, his European policy is based on that realism; one that eschews stupidity. His instincts are not that of a federalist and the rhetoric used is for a home audience; his ultimate aim is to stay in office and it is here where one can discern some Tory credentials, though it is far from clear whether he has achieved any ascendency. Whilst a master of many political tools and still his party’s greatest political asset, he is viewed with diffidence by many in his party who see him as

a blue-tinged Blair. In truth, though inheriting the effortless charm and cool that privilege bestows, he lacks the traditional Tory patrician’s ability to take a more long-term, measured and noble picture of his nation and how his role in its wellbeing should be seen through the prism of the Burkian contract between our ancestors and our yet to be born descendents.

Those traditional ‘conservative’, subtle, decent Tories have been silenced by the self referential, short-term, opinion poll obsessed political class of today. In such an environment much of what passes for political discourse has become a self-parody; and nowhere is this clearer than in regard to the EU. Yet this caricature is as true of Cameron as it is of its opponents among the other EU capitals. A feature of ‘conservatism’ is the ability to accept and live with failure by forgiving the mistakes of the past and not by pretending they never happened and thus not repeating them in the future. The hubris of a UK unblemished by the problems of the Euro or the procrastinations of self-interested policymakers in the Euro region are both a symptom of this ignorance of failure. In the final analysis, this ignorance should make us question whether or not Cameron is a real Tory and whether critics of Torysim have any idea what they are attacking.

*Marc Gafarot Holds a degree in Humanities from the Universidad de Navarra, an MSc in European Studies from the London School of Economics and an MA in Latin American Studies from the University of Liverpool. As a journalist and political commentator he has worked from London for Bloomberg LP, in Latin America for Summit Communications and served as a Parliamentary Adviser at the European Parliament in Brussels and Strasbourg. Gafarot is currently Head of International Relations for Catalan International View. He has written a book on Flanders and Federalism in Belgium called ‘La mort de Bèlgica? La gradual i pacífica emancipació flamenca’ (The Death of Belgium? The Gradual and Peaceful Flemish Emancipation) and co-authored The Student’s Guide to European Integration.

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Business, Law and Economics

The future of infrastructures: connectivity and competitiveness

by Salvador Alemany*

We live in a world in which Information and Communications Technologies (ICT) and infrastructures have almost dispensed with the concept of ‘distance’. In the global, networked world in which we live, opportunities are not to be found at the centre in a geographical sense, since one does not exist. In actual fact, there is no centre in an interdependent network.

The economic and demographic flows within this network are dynamic and tend to shift from west to east, from the northern to the southern hemisphere.

New reference points are appearing in the economic field with economic internationalisation and globalisation, as well as in the political arena. Governments today have less power than ever before, due in part to the transfer of political power to supranational bodies such as the European Union and in part to the growing role that businesses play in driving the economies of different countries and territories.

Economic policies therefore demand increasing international coordination. The world is increasingly 28

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integrated from a geopolitical and geoeconomic perspective - it is a flat, open world with fewer borders.

The role of infrastructures in a global, more connected world

We are aware of the close relationship between infrastructures and a country’s economic growth, to the point that countries cannot grow economically without a good supply of roads, motorways, railways, ports and airports.

The relationship between infrastructure investment and economic growth is bidirectional: according to World Bank estimates, a 1% increase in infrastructure stock produces a corresponding 1% increase in GDP. Moreover, a

Business, Law and Economics

1% rise in a country’s per capita income leads to a 0.5% increase in demand for infrastructure.

Infrastructures generate what economists call ‘positive externalities’.

In other words, benefits which are above and beyond their direct impact in terms of investment, the key factor being the effects they produce by distributing a region’s wealth; facilitating the implementation and generation of economic activity around the major road corridors; coherently linking and articulating the hinterland with the large metropolitan areas that act as key drivers to the attractiveness and growth potential of countries in today’s networked economy.

The OECD’s prospective report entitled Infrastructure to 2030, states that demand for infrastructure is set to continue to expand significantly in the decades ahead, driven by major factors of change such as global economic growth, technological progress, climate change, urbanisation and growing congestion. However, challenges abound: many parts of infrastructure systems in OECD countries are rapidly ageing, public finances are becoming increasingly tight and infrastructure financing is becoming more complex.

Investment in transport infrastructure projects is estimated to reach 35-40 trillion US dollars by 2030. As shown in the accompanying graph, the Catalan International View

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Business, Law and Economics

estimated needs per region are: 260 billion a year in the US and Canada; 300 billion in Latin America; 365 billion in Europe; 635 billion in Australasia and 80 billion in Africa and the Middle East.

Estimated infrastructure investments (US$ billion per year)

Europe 365

US & Canada 260

MEA 80 Latin America 300

Asia & Oceania 635

Souce: The Global Infrastructure Challenge (Boston Consulting Group, 2010)

Infrastructures and economic growth: the criterion of opportunity cost and ‘white elephants’

Nevertheless, infrastructures do not necessarily - or automatically - foster economic growth. In fact, they may cause an additional drain on public spending budgets, which earmark scarce resources for projects with economic and social returns that are questionable to say the least.

infrastructures do not necessarily - or automatically - foster economic growth For this reason, there is an urgent need to adopt a comprehensive methodology for assessing the socioeconomic and environmental output of in30

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frastructures which can be applied in a concerted way to all projects. In particular, certain variables such as budget, financing, scheduling and deadlines must be factored in to provide an objective assessment of the degree of priority of these projects based on cost-benefit criteria. Essentially we are talking about a strict, rigorous analysis of the opportunity cost among various investment alternatives, particularly with respect to assets and public services that can be funded and managed from the private sector.

Ultimately, we are looking to a regulatory and somewhat axiomatic approach that should govern infrastructure planning, from the initial design and concept stage right up to when it is actually built, which would avoid creating so-called white elephants - projects whose financing, maintenance and operation far outweigh their benefits.

In accordance with this approach, it is also vital to review the standards and regulations qualifying the conditions and technical requirements describing the various projects, establishing the minimum requirements and, ultimately determining their executive planning, budgeting, construction and subsequent operation and maintenance, always ensuring that quality and safety are of the highest standards. In addition, when referring essentially to network infrastructures that can often be operated in situations of a ‘natural monopoly’ or dominant market position, attention must also be paid to mechanisms that ensure competition, on the one hand, and regulate compliance with the terms of service or use of the relevant assets, on the other.

Accordingly it is vital to choose which infrastructures should be built and, among these, which should be prioritised and in what order they should be built. The nature of these decisions has clear implications for the territo-

Business, Law and Economics

rial model and social expectations. The decision process must therefore be irreproachable and must involve a systemic approach to the territory that includes the perspective of sustainability, industrial uses, logistics, the location of services (health, education, research, etc.) and, from this perspective, the most appropriate provision of transport and communication networks. It also requires efficient administrative structures operating at various territorial levels. This diagnosis can be seen in many countries.

Along these lines, and following this criterion, a collective awareness of the impacts of major infrastructure projects in environmental and land use terms and the development of the principle of public participation should be reflected in a consultation process before major projects are defined. This process should be supervised by an independent body, perhaps following the model of the National Commission for Public Debate, also known as the 1995 Barnier Act, established in France. This consultation process, which leads to establishing the declaration of public interest and appraising the overall project with the participation of all stakeholders, would focus on a public debate on the basic objectives and features of the actions during the planning and design stage, to identify conflicts around projects of strategic importance for the territory and make it easier to plan when the infrastructure could be brought into service.

Public sector - private sector: overcoming the ‘infrastructure gap’

In the same way that opportunity cost theory helps us prioritise different spending and investment alternatives, allowing us to avoid building white elephant infrastructures, we also need to know how to use opportunity cost to evaluate the impact of infrastructures that are necessary and guarantee suffi-

cient socioeconomic return, but lack the funding to implement them. We could say that an infrastructure that is needed and is backed by a solvent demand, but which is not built in a timely manner, leads to a drop in growth potential for the economy, representing a kind of ‘lost income’ for society. We could call this the infrastructure gap, that is, the gap between the need to provide a sufficient stock of infrastructure and the government’s ability to foster, finance and, where appropriate, manage such infrastructures.

PPPs help to solve the infrastructure gap Normalized index (1990=100)

Public debt is trending up owing to the increase in public deficits

150 140 130

Public debt as a percentage of GDP

139

120 110 90 80

Investment as a percentage of government spending

70

86

Erosion of public investment as a result of interest payments is proportionately much higher than concurrent public expenditure

60 50

1990 1992 1994 1996 1998 2000 2002 2004 2006 2008 Souce: The Global Infrastructure Challenge (Boston Consulting Group, 2010)

In the face of limited budgets, public deficit and debt constraints, lower tax income brought about by automatic stabilisers, which push up spending on social policies and coverage in times of crisis, it is necessary to explore and exploit methods of financing that make it possible to keep the focus on social needs, health, dependency and safety policies without calling into question investments in services and infrastructures that are crucial to sustaining the future growth and competitiveness of the economy.

This is the appropriate arena for public-private partnerships (PPPs), which are essentially agreements between a public administration and the private Catalan International View

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Business, Law and Economics

It is vital to innovate and to give a preponderant role to the private sector in managing and financing infrastructures sector to provide a public service, with particular emphasis on the proper distribution of risk and responsibility. In fact, the concept of PPP ranges from the organisation of public procurement for civil works to traditional concessions in the areas of services, the road network, energy, water and telecommunications, as well as covering joint public and private capital ventures.

It is vital to innovate and to give a preponderant role to the private sector in managing and financing infrastructures through (i) pay-for-use systems and internalising externalities (environmental costs and usage costs);

(ii) watertight contracts between the various public and private stakeholders involved, to regulate any subsequent changes and avoid arbitrary interpretations; and (iii) a more structural vision of public-private participation.

It would be wrong to think that the use of public-private partnership schemes could solve the current crisis, but there is no doubt that some infrastructure investments respond to the principle of socioeconomic return - and that includes externalities - while meeting the objective of financial return required by the private sector. PPP structures can also ‘attract and foster’ the underlying value of infrastructures which, while remaining in public hands, can nonetheless be operated from the private sector to generate resources that can help control and, where possible, reduce public deficit and debt, thereby taking pressure off the resources required by other needs met by the public sector.

If we could achieve sound planning and an adequate justification of the reason for each project, participatory and transparent decision-making processes, capable regulators equipped with the necessary tools, assessment bodies monitoring and renegotiating contracts with the private sector when necessary, then we believe that the private sector could play a decisive role in making the future map of the infrastructures a reality. It could do this using efficient financial and operational management to capitalise the territory (infrastructure stock) with minimal use of public resources. This, then, is both a challenge and an opportunity.

*Salvador Alemany (Barcelona, 1944) holds a degree in Economic Sciences (Universitat de Barcelona). He is a Chartered Accountant and a graduate of IESE business school. He is Chairman of the Government of Catalonia’s Advisory Council for Economic Revival and Growth, Chairman of the Universitat de Barcelona’s Board of Trustees and was Chairman of the Economic Circle from 2008 to May 2011. Alemany is currently President of Abertis Infraestructuras, S.A. and Saba Infraestructuras, S.A.

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Business, Law and Economics

Globalization and the certainty of economic transactions

by Joan Ramon Rovira and Jordi SellarĂŠs*

The latest edition of the KOF Index of Globalization, corresponding to 2013, shows to what extent the economic crisis has slowed down the process of world-wide globalization1. This widely-known index is designed to measure the phenomenon of globalization from three different and complementary dimensions: economic, social and political. It is used to assess changes in the degree of globalization of 187 countries for the period 1970-2010. To measure the economic dimension it takes into account current trade and investment volumes, as well as the extent to which countries apply trade and capital movement restrictions. The overall index value of the KOF Index firstly shows that no changes have occurred among the top five countries compared to last year, consolidating the shift from the previous increasing trend for the second year in a row, and secondly that it affects all world regions.

[1] Detailed information on the KOF Index of Globalization 2013 can be found at http://globalization.kof.ethz.ch. See also Dreher, Axel (2006): ‘Does Glozablization Affect Growth? Evidence from a new Index of Globalization’, Applied Economics 38, 10: 1091-1110.

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This worldwide stagnation of the globalization process can be attributed, first and foremost, to the financial and economic crisis. However, it also has to be said that high income countries and the OECD countries in particular have shown a tendency to stagnation that began even before the current crisis.

To some extent, this may partly reflect decreasing returns on globalization for those advanced countries that have already achieved a very high degree of economic, social and political integration at an international level. Nevertheless there are other forces at work which may also represent an important obstacle to the globalization process which are related to the institutional framework within which economic transactions are conducted.

Catalan International View

Institutions can be defined as the set of values, norms and rules that serve to coordinate economic transactions. There is already an extensive literature on the impact of institutions on economic well-being and growth. More specifically, the quality of the institutional capital that has evolved as a result of the interactions among countries in the international field over time is a central factor that can speed up or slow down the globalization process. In particular, the legal certainty of economic transactions plays a crucial role in defining the depth and reach of globalization at each point in time in different world regions.

Trade means exchanging money for goods. This is a simple and well known fact. But trade crucially depends on two basic assumptions:

Business, Law and Economics

First: Contracts must be honoured.

Or as stated in Roman Law: Pacta sunt servanda. What is agreed must later be fulfilled. This is a norm with universal validity, that applies everywhere in the world. It is based on the principle of good faith, or bona fide. Nobody would do business with anyone if there was the suspicion that the other party was cheating, that contracts are going to be ignored, or that fraud is the rule.

Second: The rule of law, which in the continental tradition can be translated into expressions such as Estat de dret, État de droit or Rechtsstaat.

A norm with legal form cannot be changed arbitrarily. Laws and the organs that serve to apply them must be stable. The state and anyone serving the state or its organs must respect the lim-

its set by law. The powers of the state must also be established by law. Legal certainty and some degree of predictability with respect to the consequences of commercial agreements is an essential component to be able to trade with someone in a different country. This approach to transactions assumes that in case the operation does not work out as expected, there will always be mechanisms to solve the dispute and no one will break the rules without a sanction.

Ways and means are offered by states, or accepted by states.

If we are to assess the global trends as far as security in legal transactions is concerned, and its influence on world trade, we have to acknowledge that there are two main issues at the forefront. In the first place, there is a Catalan International View

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need for legal certainty in the as yet quite unregulated area of the internet, where no state has real power of enforcement. Though there is ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), that makes the rules regarding domain names, it was created as a body of the US administration to control the small, original version of the internet. However, it has now evolved into a coordinating body with a worldwide impact, more stakeholders concerned, even if there is still little regulation and leaves the world wide web at arms length from any organization with the power to decide on what the rules of interaction are in this field. States can still block web pages or whole networks within their territories (as France and the People’s Republic of China have already done, for instance) whenever they consider it infringes the local law or represents a risk to the ruling political regime. But 36

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there is still no power ‘out there’, in the limbo of the cloud, which can effectively bridge the gap between no regulation and the margin for arbitrariness in the hands of individual governments. UIT, the telecommunications organization founded in the 19th century and now part of the United Nations system, has received some pressure from a number of countries in order to assume a new role as the internet’s regulatory body and several international conferences and summits have taken place to achieve this aim. But this initiative has so far not met with success . Other projects in this direction, lead by different international organizations (like the Council of Europe) have aimed at more modest targets, such as creating a set of international conventions to rule on the more basic principles concerning the legality of the internet. To conclude: there is no clear trend as yet towards a global, coherent and binding

Business, Law and Economics

set of regulations concerning the use of the internet worldwide, which leaves its ever-increasing flows of information to flow freely alongside the many risks involved.

In what we may call the tangible world, meanwhile, we see how the World Trade Organization keeps growing, adding more members, even if successive rounds of negotiations to establish new areas under regulation, including agriculture but also investment flows, have not been as successful. Many areas of economic transactions that were never covered by such a wide and efficient multilateral agreement, such as trade in services, intellectual property, textiles, etc., are now regulated by using some of the efficient WTO tools that have demonstrated their usefulness in most sectors of commerce. According to the WTO treaties, in today’s world no state can favour its own products over those coming from abroad (apart from those still outside the WTO) and states cannot prevent foreign goods from being sold everywhere. Even if a state (or an international organization, like the European Union) tries to discriminate, de facto, while claiming to fulfil the common rules, de iure, the body established to solve disputes in the Marrakech Final Act will take a decision and will allow reprisals until those rules that have been circumvented are successfully brought back to effective enforcement. This policy has worked reasonably well in the US and the European Union (the ‘Banana Trade Wars’ would be an example), two of the most powerful players in the global economy. Therefore, it should work with everyone within the WTO. An organization currently made up of almost 160 members. In the world of trade in tangible, material goods, the certainty and predictability of the rules that regulate this trade is much greater now than it was 20 years ago. And it does not seem as if the system is about

to fall apart, even if the Doha round takes ten more years to complete. The results achieved so far have proven to be useful to the international community as a whole and no one foresees any state or free trade area leaving the global trade system. To summarize: there is a clear trend towards the configuration of a set of global rules concerning trade in products, services and intellectual rights, with a form of court or arbitral system to deal with those that break the rules, which is empowered with the authority to impose sanctions. Thus, not a single trend, but two contradictory ones are taking place at the same time, though in two different spheres (real trade and internet relations) which are also linked.

Flows of trade and investment only flourish in those areas where there is a well-rooted respect for the principle of pacta sunt servanda and the rule of law

Meawhile, we also find two competing forces at work in the area of cross-border investments. In most of the world the trend is clearly towards an increasing legal protection of foreign investment, which is widely considered a central engine of economic activity that brings about more trade, more employment, more taxes and more welfare. This trend is clearly associated with an increase in the number of bilateral treaties that include arbitration mechanisms as the means to solve disputes between individuals or companies and states attracting investment.

However, there are also certain specific areas where there has been some return to some old rhetoric which is sceptical of or even belligerent towards the protection of foreign investment. This second trend is fundamentally limited to Catalan International View

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some Latin American countries, such as Argentina, Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and perhaps Nicaragua, and essentially frees national governments to take whatever decisions they consider appropriate if it can be argued that they are in their country’s best interest or their sovereignty is at stake. The failure of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and the Argentinean government’s attempt to expropriate Repsol’s 50% share in the YPF oil company in order to resell some strategic oil fields (Vaca Muerta) to other oil companies, is a clear example. The obvious question is who would invest in a country in which there is a distinct possibility that the local government might not fulfil its agreements, laws will not be honoured and there will be no mechanism to avoid an arbitrary use of power?

Small countries need free trade and foreign investment as much as we need the air we breathe Flows of trade and investment only flourish in those areas where there is a well-rooted respect for the principle of pacta sunt servanda and the rule of law. The fulfilment of obligations and the presence of reliable instruments to ensure that these obligations are

effectively implemented are essential components of any working economy.

Money can be frightened off very quickly. The absence of legal certainties concerning the economic transactions and an insecure institutional framework relating to trade and investment is one of the fastest ways to block economic activity.

Going back to the KOF Index with which we opened this article it is interesting to note that the five most globalized countries in the world are all of a relatively small size: Belgium, Ireland, the Netherlands, Austria and Singapore. Small countries need free trade and foreign investment as much as we need the air we breathe. In fact, there seems to be no significant correlation between the size of a country and its capacity to grow and thrive economically as long as small countries can compensate potential diseconomies of scale through a deeper integration in the world economy. This is clearly the case with Catalonia, the main drivers towards an effective, efficient and equitable globalization seem to be the relatively numerous, small but open countries such as Catalonia. For such countries, the quality of their institutional framework with respect to crucial issues such as the legal certainty and predictability of economic transactions is the most important factor separating economic success from failure.

*Joan Ramon Rovira is the Head of the Economic Studies Cabinet of the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce. He holds a degree in Law from the University of Barcelona, and a MA and a PHD in Economics from Manchester University.

*Jordi Sellarés is Secretary General of the Spanish Committee of the International Chamber of Commerce.

He holds a degree and a PHD in Law from the University of Barcelona (UB) and a Master in International Relations from the Cambridge University. He is also associate professor in Public International Law at the UB and ESADE.

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Catalan International View

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The Americas

Obama and arms: challenges at home, challenges abroad

by Jordi Armadans*

Barack Obama took possession of the White House following two terms which were characterized, among many other things, by exacerbated militarism and a contempt for dialogue and consensus-building on a global level.

After the actions of the Bush administration, Obama did not have to do much to look like a big change, as was the case in Spain when Zapatero took over following Aznar’s disastrous handiwork. In fact, it was Obama’s appeal to a return to multilateralism and his critique of resorting to war as the sole solution to problems which led the Norwegian Nobel Committee to dare to award him the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize. It was a decision that could only be understood as an amendment to the legacy of George Bush, rather than on his own merits.

In this article I do not intend to evaluate Obama’s mandate in terms of peace. To do so would require many pages and would require taking many factors into account: Obama is the president who wanted to close Guantanamo and the only president of a nuclear power that has acknowledged that they have not achieved what they might. He is also the president who has approved more ‘surgical strikes’ by drones, with a high death toll and of a dubious legality.

Here I shall look at Obama’s relationship with arms. At the end of his first term and the beginning of the second, Obama has had to face two major challenges: arms control at the national 40

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level and the control of the arms trade on a global level.

It must be said that these are very different matters: in one we are dealing with establishing rules regarding the access to and possession of weapons on a personal level within the United States and in the other, how to regulate the global trade and transfer of arms between all states. Nevertheless, both situations present the same difficulties (a political culture which defends arms) and resistance (a tremendously pro-active arms lobby). The issue clearly warrants a closer look.

At home: from gun culture to a debate about safety

The brutal killings that took place in Newtown in late 2012 profoundly affected the United States. For the first time in many years it finally seemed as if steps would be taken to address gun control.

As is well known, an individual’s right to own a weapon is part of America’s dominant political culture and it is enshrined in the country’s origins (where reference is made to them in the Second Amendment to the US Constitution, although there are legal interpretations that consider its use to be excessive and taken out of context).

The Americas

Such beliefs arise from an ideological tradition that values the individual over the role of government.

Nonetheless, the legal framework exists to act on and respond to any problems which may arise. Following the Newtown killings it emerged, with bitter clarity, that the US has a serious security problem due to its tolerance of weapons: with proliferation (more than 300 million guns in private hands) a lack of control (insufficient safeguards over the access to weapons) and the terrible human consequences (30,000 people killed each year by firearms, a much higher figure than the deaths resulting from most armed conflicts).

Obama felt he had to take advantage of the emotional impact of Newtown by trying to force a substantial increase in the control and limitation of the possession of weapons in the United States.

He became personally involved in the issue by making proposals, promoting legislative changes and issuing a large number of forceful public statements.

When he presented a series of proposals a month after the tragedy, he made it clear that he is not resigned to leaving things as they are, ‘If we can save even just one life, we have an obligation to try and act right now’.

Around half of the weapons which are bought in the US are sold at fairs or on the internet, where the buyer has no obligation to identify themselves, thereby making it impossible to carry out background checks. Thus, it is almost inevitable that weapons end up in the hands of people who have violent intentions or have a long criminal record. Calling for background checks on the buyer of a weapon is clearly sensible and reasonable. So too is a ban on the sale of semi-automatic and assault rifles for private use, as they exceed any possible or theoretical selfdefence needs.

These are some of the measures that President Obama has been calling for throughout this period, along with Senator Dianne Feinstein, architect of the most recent gun control legislation to have been passed (in 1994!) and New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who plays a prominent role as head of a network of mayors in favour of gun control, in addition to dozens of public campaigns.

However, the National Rifle Association (NRA) is one of the most powerful organizations in the United States. It has a broad social base, a great ability to influence the country’s political agenda and direct access to many Catalan International View

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politicians and the ability to influence their discourse thanks to campaign financing. It is deeply opposed to having more limits on the access to weapons.

Many Republican senators and congressmen commune with the NRA as too do a good number of Democrats.

Therefore any gun control legislation faces stiff opposition.

As it turned out, the initial momentum behind the campaign was lost and the proposed ban on assault rifles was left off the amendment. In order to ensure its success, it was jointly agreed on and presented by a Democratic senator ( Joe Manchin) and a Republican senator (Pat Toomey), both NRA members.

Nevertheless, nothing has become of it, with the first round ending in failure in the Senate. On April 17th, the amendment which sought to widen background checks received only 54 votes in support (needing 60 to be passed) and 46 against.

Obama has once again resorted to the only power available to him to express his deep displeasure, his public speeches: ‘Today is a day of shame for Washington’. He saw the rejection of the amendment as, ‘the preservation of the legal loophole that allows dangerous criminals to buy guns without a background check. This does not make our children safer’.

Abroad: from an arms superpower to support for a treaty to regulate the arms trade

It is clear that the arms trade is a dangerous business. Nonetheless, nothing has ever been done to lower the dangers on a global scale: there are international controls and rules governing the trade of many products but none relating to arms.

In the mid 90s, NGOs and Nobel Peace Prize winners warned the international community of the grave and uncontrolled proliferation of arms that fuels armed violence around the world.

They called on all nations to adopt 42

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binding global regulations. In 2003, these concerns led the Control Arms Campaign to call for the adoption of an Arms Trade Treaty (ATT) to establish controls, set limits and establish common-sense criteria that would be mandatory for all states. These included banning the sale of arms to those guilty of genocide or other war crimes.

In the first round of voting on this initiative at the United Nations, the United States strongly opposed it. The US leads the arms race, in addition to being actively involved in several conflicts. It was not until 2009, with Obama as president, that the United States changed its mind: Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, made a public statement saying that the US is committed to an arms treaty. It was to be a key move: besides giving the process a big boost, other countries which had previously been reluctant stopped being so strongly opposed, which led to a decision to organise a diplomatic conference specifically related to the ATT. The United States’ agreement had one condition, however, that was later revealed as one of the key diplomatic failures of 2012 and 2013: the treaty had to be passed by a consensus.

The proposed ATT has received the backing of countries in the European Union, the great majority of African countries and a significant number of South and Central American countries.

For their part, Russia, China, India, Egypt and several other countries have shown themselves to be hostile and reluctant to the ATT. Meanwhile the US were somewhere in the middle, playing an ambiguous role. They were formally involved, but often put the brakes on the treaty and, in some instances, threatened to derail it altogether if it went too far.

What were their concerns? Basically, the United States was fighting to ensure that small arms and ammunition were not covered by the treaty. In

The Americas

general they wanted to greatly reduce its compulsory nature and references to human rights as a criterion to be considered by states when evaluating an arms sale.

In July 2012, after 4 preparatory meetings (a total of 6 weeks of negotiations) and a whole month of final conferences, the United States’ representative declared there had been ‘insufficient time’ to reach an agreement.

While it was true that the final text arrived late, it was clear that this was not the real motive: although the ATT regulates the international arms trade, the NRA was still fundamentally opposed to it, arguing that the ATT was the beginning of the end of the personal possession of weapons in the US. As it turned out, the day before the end of the conference, a letter from several US senators caused an uproar over the possibility that Obama would give a green light to the deal. This, plus the destructive campaign conducted by the NRA and the proximity of the November elections, made a big impact.

The refusal from the US gave the goahead to other reluctant powers: Russia and China also joined in, and it became clear that there was no consensus.

The countries that had originally backed the treaty were able to pass a UN General Assembly resolution approving an extension to negotiations until March 2013. In this instance, the United States, in spite of a more ambitious text than in July 2012 (small arms were still included, ammunition and parts and components were better covered, etc.), not only failed to object to it but ended up changing from the undecided/reluctant group to join those in favour. When the lack of consensus

once more became apparent (in this instance from North Korea, Syria and Iran), the United States was among the countries that opted to quickly take the ATT’s final draft to the General Assembly where a simple majority is required to pass a resolution. Thereby the treaty was adopted.

Following the Newtown killings it emerged, with bitter clarity, that the US has a serious security problem due to its tolerance of weapons: proliferation, lack of control and terrible human consequences

Everyone is well aware that Obama backs the treaty and that the US will sign it. But when it comes to ratifying it, it is highly likely that the US Senate will not do so, thus Obama’s gesture will have been for nothing. Nonetheless it is undeniable that, in addition to the pressure from the public and NGOs over a of 16-year period, for better or for worse Obama’s United States has been instrumental in the recent history and eventual fate of the Arms Trade Treaty.

In short, considering the part played by the previous administration and what remains as the dominant political culture in the US, Obama has invested heavily in the double challenge he has faced over arms: he has lost the first, and for the time being he has succeeded with the second. However, the victims of gun violence in the United States and the world as a whole desperately need two clear and convincing victories.

*Jordi Armadans Political scientist and journalist. Director of FundiPau (Foundation for Peace) and member of the Control Arms Campaign.

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Africa

Sand, uranium and terrorism

by Jordi Fexas*

To paraphrase the title of that well-known novel by the Colombian Gabriel García Marquez, Mali was the ‘Chronicle of a Death, or an Implosion Foretold’. It could be said that the Sahelian states are by definition fragile. They inherited their seemingly-random, meaningless borders from the Berlin Conference. The vast sea of sand in this region allowed the colonialists a free hand to draw the administrative boundaries of their former colonies.

The Sahelian states are meeting places between the Arab, Muslim north and the Sub-Saharan cultures and peoples.

In spite of the fact that Islam sometimes serves as a common reference point, they are worlds that have not always maintained cordial relations over the last 1000 years. There have been many centuries of the slave trade, of once-powerful castes in the north that are now despised, of scorn and of wounds that have not always healed.

Nowadays, although these frontier states are not always the most violent, they amount to a political and social cocktail that is hard to swallow. The Sahel is the poorest region on the continent, and specifically the one with the least potential and prospects for development. In this sense, the continent is home to huge regional inequalities. It is worth remembering that in 2012, six of the world’s ten fastest-growing economies were African.

However, in the case of the Sahel, it is a composite structure with an often irreconcilable north and south, unstoppable desertification that threatens the very existence of agriculture and livestock, and it is a geostrategic enclave of relative importance while being removed from the major trade routes and economic flows. This probably explains why the Sahelian states have greater 44

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structural weaknesses than most others on the continent.

In the case of Mali, we must add to these factors the presence of armed factions of Islamic fundamentalists and the contamination stemming from the war in Libya which has displaced armed rebels and heavy weapons ready to feed any latent conflict. We should not be surprised that a democracy such as Mali, which was young and not without instability, has ended up imploding.

A few decades ago, if Bamako or any other African capital had requested a military intervention by its former colonisers in order to deal with an internal crisis, one would immediately assume that it was all part of a plot by the secret services of the latter to justify such a move. Though it is true that when it comes to French policy on the continent nothing can be ruled out, in this instance, Paris has made a major U-turn in terms of policy and its modus operandi with respect to the parameters of classical French interventions in Africa.

France went to Afghanistan out of ‘duty’, it led the intervention in Libya because it thought it could get something in return and has intervened in Mali because it felt it had a lot to lose.

In l’Hexagone [as France is often known, due to its shape] they know full well that

Africa

an operation of the kind that has been carried out in Mali is better understood by the public than their presence in Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya. Nevertheless the domestic costs are also potentially greater. There are millions of subSaharan Africans in France, whereas the number of Afghans, Iraqis and Libyans is minute. This is why this time French diplomacy has worked hard to gain the support of all the governments in the region.

Despite being the result of a seemingly hasty decision, the French operation has had the direct help of the Chadian army as well as major international and regional support: from an African Union resolution, the mobilization of Niger’s army, approval for missions by the UN (MISMA) and ECOWAS, to a firm commitment from most countries in the region and Washington’s political and logistical support.

The Pentagon’s wishes have come true in the form of the Elysee. The American administration has long warned the international community about the presence of jihadist movements and drug cartels in the region and has insisted on the need to intervene.

The US were well aware that it would have been inappropriate for them to intervene in this way thanks to the ghost of the disaster in Soma-

lia that still haunts them. The crisis in Mali and the speed with which events have unfolded have allowed them to conduct an impromptu ‘clean up’ operation which has precipitated the support they have long struggled to obtain.

US policy on the African continent has been very active in recent years, revealing its desire to strengthen its diplomatic ties with Africa, especially in issues relating to security. East Africa was the initial gateway, especially the small states in the Great Lakes region.

The US is in the process of building a huge embassy in Bujumbura, the capital of quiet, secluded Burundi, which is to cover the White House’s needs in the eastern part of the continent. Nevertheless, America still has major blind spots on the continent in terms of strategic issues. And perhaps the Sahel is the most significant.

We should not be surprised that a democracy which is young and not without instability, has ended up imploding France has as much if not more at stake in the Saharan puzzle than Washington, however. Beyond the public, official version according to the Elysee, which is guaranteeing the Catalan International View

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safety of its citizens in the region, the fight against terrorism and contributing to the stabilization of regional democracies, in this remote sea of sand, yesterday Sarkozy and today Hollande, are hoping they can convert the continent to twenty-first century diplomacy. They wish to do so via the French energy security model, the ability to remain a first-division player on the international scene, the respect and ties with countries in the region and possibly what used to be known and feared as ‘Africa’s gendarmerie’ (between 1960 and 2005 France carried out more than 40 military operations on the continent).

Jihadism casts a wide net in terms of its ability to recruit in the region and, following the Libyan crisis, its qualitative and quantitative potential has increased considerably French diplomacy therefore requires that the security of Niger’s uranium mines, which account for over 30% of supplies to its nuclear power stations, is not threatened. Secondly, that the Pentagon understands that without France at the helm, there is no hope of having an African security policy from Kinshasa to the north. Thirdly, that France’s allies in the region see that la Francophonie is a commitment that goes beyond cultural, economic and historical ties. And finally putting out the message and showing its muscles to convince the international community that Paris is a first division player in Africa and wherever and whenever they are needed.

Roosevelt referred to Latin America as ‘America’s backyard’. France would like to adapt the concept to its dealings with Africa. However, the process of globalization and the 46

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gradual shift from a bipolar world towards multilateralism have produced profound changes when it comes to focusing on and solving problems with global implications. For France this means becoming a ‘good global citizen’ and representing their overseas interventions on a discourse based on the strategic demands of security, peace and the democratization of the global agenda.

The war in northern Mali will most likely be swift and successful in terms of meeting the most basic objectives of its participants. That is to neutralize, at least temporarily, the operational and destabilizing capacity of jihadist groups in the region and provide a respite for Bamako, Niamey and Nouackchoot in particular. Another aim is to allay Washington’s fears of another uncontrollable anti-American Islamist front.

If current events remain on course, the Elysee and the White House in particular will have found a good way to combat armed Islamism outside their borders. That is, committed continental and regional diplomacy, the direct military involvement of the states in the region and regional organisations, the support or indifference of the inhabitants of the region to the presence of Western troops and justificatory or cavalier treatment by the majority of the world’s media. In this sense the Malian crisis may prove to be a convenient laboratory, in spite of its unusual characteristics, in which to try out a modus operandi that can be exported to other regions.

The main players who triggered the crisis and the multilateral African intervention in French are Islamique Al-Qaeda au Maghreb (AQIM), Ansar Dine and the Mouvement pour l’Unicité et le Jihad en Afrique de l’Ouest (MUJAO). These groups are fed by a combination of activists from different parts of the region. The leaders are typically Algerian and the activists

Africa

Mauritanian and Malian. Jihadism casts a wide net in terms of its ability to recruit in the region and, following the Libyan crisis, its qualitative and quantitative potential has increased considerably. As a result, it is hard to estimate the current state of the assets of these groups.

The whole Maghreb and the Sahel, from Mauritania to Somalia are a potential source of armed jihadi activism.

These groups have almost complete freedom of movement and possess an opportunistic strategy. They know how to take advantage of a crisis and make the most of conflicts and local grievances: the simmering conflict between the Tuareg and states in the region, the return or displacement of large numbers of pro-Gadaffi mercenaries in the region, the failure of Bamako, Niamey, Nouakchott, Tripoli and Algiers to provide basic services to many people living in the most remote and peripheral areas of the respective states. These are some of the circumstances which these groups take advantage of in order to consolidate their presence and the reach of their operations. In addition, the Sahel forms part of a drug trafficking route from Latin America to Europe which is a potential source of income for these groups.

Mali’s neighbours and the other participants involved in the pacification of the region would do well to separate the Tuareg’s social and political demands from jihadist activity when seeking solutions to the stability of the region. Although much of the ‘Targui’ movement, mainly represent-

ed by the MNLA (National Movement for the Liberation of Azawad), had initially been an opportunity for political objectives, they formed an alliance with armed Islamist groups on the principle of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’. In itself this should not discredit or invalidate many of the just social and political demands made by the MNLA that go back decades. It also appears as if at the last minute the leaders of the self-proclaimed Azawad Republic have had a change of heart by supporting the presence of Chadian and French troops. Military intervention can only be justified as a temporary, emergency measure to prevent the collapse of the weak democracies in the region, so long as it is accompanied by a genuine plan to consolidate better governance in the countries in the region. This will involve finding a structural solution to political and social issues, particularly in Niger and Mali, facing people of Amazigh origin, who inhabit areas infiltrated by Islamist terrorism.

Paris has already withdrawn part of its military contingent and does not wish its presence in the area to last beyond 2013, with any troops that remain being under African command. At first glance everything appears to be well thought out, but it must be stressed that a resolution to the Azawad issue is fundamental to ensuring a degree of control and stability in the region. Paris and Washington may be able to withdraw from the combat phase, but not the political.

*Jordi Fexas (Barcelona, 1966). He holds a degree in Contemporary History from the Universitat de Barcelona, specialising in Anthropology and African History and conducted doctoral studies at the Institut d’Història JVV(UPF). He has a wide range of experience in the private sector. He has also worked as an anthropologist, conducting fieldwork in Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

As a journalist he has contributed articles in numerous magazines dealing with contemporary issues. He is currently Igman-AS’s Head of Projects in the Maghreb and Sub-Saharan Africa.

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Africa

Tunisia: a Mediterranean journey towards democratic reform

by Tayssir Azouz*

It was here, in Catalonia, that I discovered a character that would change my life: a Franciscan Catalan writer and translator of the 14th and 15th century who decided to convert to Islam and establish himself in the city of Tunis around 1392. He is considered to be one of the finest writers of his time. He was seen by some as a true ambassador of the Mediterranean, a precious liaison between the Catalonia-Aragon Kingdom and North Africa. He is buried in the heart of the Medina at Bab Mnara (the historical Beylical centre of Tunis).

In the 21st century, I seemingly chose the same path, only in the opposite direction, and leaving aside the dividing world of religion. Nonetheless, I still closely follow the state of affairs in my country of origin.

Two years after the Tunisian Revolution, it is fair to say that the country is still experiencing difficulties in its quest for political stabilisation and democratic reform. History has repeatedly proven that transition periods take varying amounts of time before reaching a stable and healthy situation, if at all. Let us not forget that following the French Revolution of 1789 it took France around two centuries to establish a fully functioning Republic. Spain, in reality, is still very far from having a truly stable democratic system despite 48

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being part of the European Union. The flagrant case of Catalonia is a clear example of Spain’s unresolved historical crisis between the two nations. Unity achieved by the use of force and numerous attempts to annihilate another nation and its people cannot be called unity. And the list goes on. The point being that every transition not only takes time but requires close attention to resolve the deepest and most pressing conflicts.

The Ben Ali years were particularly difficult for the majority of the Tunisian population, especially for those in the most rural areas who were, in some cases, completely cut off from reality.

The country was living under a true silent dictatorship. Secret police listening in on one’s conversations over cof-

Africa

fee, random arrests of journalists, the political mise-en-scène at the so-called Parliament, government interference in private investments and a whole range of control-oriented behaviour. Today, we are witnessing the typical postrevolution symptoms on the streets of Tunis and in the country’s main cities: ochlocracy. High unemployment, frustration, opportunism, poor public infrastructures and the lack of selfcriticism are adversities which Tunisia now needs to face.

The current Tunisian Troika government formed by Ennahdha (a moderate Islamist party), CPR (a centreleft republican party) and Ettakatol (the Democratic Forum for Labour and Liberties) has been very passive in dealing with the waves of violence that

are threatening the country’s hopes of becoming a modern democracy in the North African region. This noninterventionist policy is backed by Ennahdha in particular due to its religious ideology. Radical groups have gone unpunished following the burning of mausoleums, landmark buildings, libraries and other components of the country’s heritage. In fact, one of the 12 mausoleums which was burned down, located in the heart of the popular northern suburb of Sidi Bou Said, was classified as a UNESCO World Heritage landmark. Youssef Siddik, a famous Tunisian anthropologist, was unable to contain his anger over losing hundreds of rare manuscripts written in a calligraphy belonging to the ancient Sidi Bou Said inhabitants. A minority Catalan International View

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movement of Salafists inspired by Saudi Wahabist ideologies were blamed for these losses. This minority radical group has been acting with virtual impunity during this transition period: passing on religious propaganda, printing inappropriate children’s schoolbooks, publicly calling for the murder of Jews. It all sounds rather pessimistic but let us not forget that they remain a minority and do not represent the majority of the Tunisian people, despite the dubious accounts commonly found in the Western media.

the country’s lack of a democratic culture is hurting the general interests of one of the world’s most tolerant nations However, the big turning point undoubtedly came following the February 6th 2013 assassination of the historical left wing opposition leader, Chokri Belaid, which paralyzed the country for several weeks. The killing sparked violent demonstrations and plunged the country into the most serious political crisis since the 2011 revolution. In his role as an elected representative at the Constituent Assembly, Belaid was much appreciated by a large majority of his colleagues, but more importantly by most Tunisians, for his sincere speeches during his public appearances.

His funeral was attended by hundreds of thousands of citizens, all mourning their loss as a nation.

Chokri Belaid’s death even led to an internal division within Ennahdha.

Hamadi Jebali, Prime Minister and General Secretary of the moderate Islamists at the time, resigned shortly after the events as he was incapable of forming the new, more pluralistic coalition government the people were calling for.

As the murder investigation continues, many Ennahdha members are start-

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ing to doubt the leadership of Rached Ghannouchi, co-founder of the movement. Let us not forget that most of Ennahdha’s political leaders were jailed under Ben Ali for plotting a coup and two terrorist attacks on tourists in the cities of Sousse and Monastir back in 1987. According to opinion polls, Nidaa Tounes, led by Bourguiba’s former Minister of Foreign Affairs, is seen as a true alternative to Ennahdha in the upcoming elections following the adoption of the new Tunisian constitution.

All in all, the political situation remains extremely delicate. The country’s economy is consequently showing signs of weakness despite its competitiveness and its location in the heart of the Mediterranean which makes it a strategical hub for business in the region, especially with the European Union, with whom the country has signed special bilateral trade agreements since 2007. Airbus, for instance, develops and manufactures all their microprocessors in Tunisia. The company, along with Aerolia, is looking to open a huge cargo park for aircraft maintenance in the near future.

Following the attack by Salafist groups on the US embassy on September 14th 2012, Google chose to pull out of a deal to settle in Tunisia. This was a big blow for the young graduates, the true leaders of the Arab Spring who were looking for better opportunities and jobs.

What is the real problem in Tunisia? It is not an easy question to answer. However, it seems clear that the country’s lack of a democratic culture is hurting the general interests of one of the world’s most tolerant nations.

In addition, there seems to be no leading figure, no new Bourguiba, who can help the country unite once more and rebuild a new, modern democracy.

Power-hungry Ennahdha politicians have seemingly set aside the project of the Constituent Assembly to rewrite a

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new constitution in order to concentrate on maintaining political power.

Priorities do not yet seem to be clear for the Tunisian political class.

In the midst of the global social and economic crisis, corruption is a longlasting obstacle which is widening the trust gap between electors and their representatives, not only in Tunisia.

It serves to raise doubts over current political systems the world over. The Tunisian revolution undoubtedly represents a rejection of corrupt systems.

What Tunisia needs is time to mature on its own, free from any interestbased interference by greedy countries.

The visionary Bourguiba not only liberated Tunisia in 1956. He almost

single-handedly created a modern Tunisian State, a Tunisian Republic which was at the service of its citizens.

The Code of Personal Status, a series of progressive Tunisian laws aimed at establishing equality between men and women in a great number of areas, came into effect in 1957. One of these laws prohibited polygamy. Others established equal rights for men and women within marriage.

President Bourguiba, who was greatly admired by John Fitzgerald Kennedy, always stated that education and women’s rights were the key to a prosperous Tunisia. Indeed it was their best hope. It remains so today.

*Tayssir Azouz (Tunis, 1986) has a degree in International Affairs and International Economics (George Washington University) and an MA in Catalan Language, Literature and Culture (Universitat Rovira i Virgili).

He has worked as a translator for the Washington-based NGO WSA and has taught Catalan for many years. He is currently teaching at APLEC (Associació per a l’Ensenyament del Català) in Perpignan, in addition to working as a multilingual translator (Catalan/Spanish/English/French/Arabic) and regional director for Tick Translations Perpignan.

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China, ‘beyond index’

by Iris Mir*

‘Beyond index’. That’s the reading of the air quality monitoring station of the Embassy of the United States in China when pollution levels exceed 500. When this threshold is surpassed the machine is unable to measure the quantity of tiny, deadly particles of pollutants that are present in the air. This winter, air pollution in Beijing reached alarming levels, some 40 times higher than limits for healthy air set by the World Health Organization. Eager to achieve miraculous economic growth, the Communist Party of China overlooked the serious and devastating social and environmental problems caused by an export-led model of development. Many unresolved issues where left unattended, and they are now becoming a powerful source of social tension and discontentment. As China’s helpless society struggles to carry on, treasured social stability is being jeopardized to similarly ‘beyond index’ levels. The Chinese lack egalitarian access to education, health and social services. Soaring prices in the real estate sector make housing unaffordable, while inflation keeps pushing consumer prices ever higher. Likewise, China’s ageing population is retiring solely relying on their savings. Meanwhile, persistent toxic food and water scares keep the population constantly concerned as to their wellbeing.

The almost 3000 delegates of the Communist Party met last March for the annual session of the National People’s Congress (NPC), the official legislative body. Seen as representatives of the people’s interests, they took part in two weeks of orchestrated deliberations, or what is known as Intra Party democracy, finally confirming Xi Jinping and Li Keqiang as the new President and Prime Minister of China, respectively.

Accompanied by a rejuvenated cabinet, the new generation of leaders are now facing a time bomb. Theirs will be one of the most complex terms since Deng Xiaoping established his road-map of opening up and reform 30 years ago.

China is home to some of the highest levels of inequalities in the world. Social discontentment is reaching increasingly alarming levels and affects muchneeded domestic consumption. China’s liberal intellectuals see this critical moment as a great window of opportunity, hoping the latest NPC session will mark the beginning of a new era, with leaders finally abandoning empty rhet52

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oric and showing a true commitment to reform. Nonetheless, both Xi and Li’s first public speeches proved them wrong. They did talk about reform, fairness, improving people’s lives and tackling corruption. However, they failed to give any specific details as to how these dramatic changes would actually take place. Corruption and entrenched powerful interest groups are at the core of this system. Freedom and political reform are therefore considered to be a threat to the regime’s survival.

One bad apple

Shortly after becoming the Party’s Secretary General in November 2012, Xi Jinping started an anti-corruption campaign to fight the Party’s bad apples. Development has exposed the great privileges that officials, local governments and State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs) enjoy while fuelling an increasing divide between the rich and the poor. In a propagandistic effort, Xi launched an austerity drive aimed at convincing the Chinese

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that he will lead a new era featuring a down-to-earth political elite. Leaving hedonism, opulence and extravagance behind, the Party will stop wasting money on organizing generous state banquets or expensive communist ceremonies. On the contrary, it will lead by example. Therefore, the world’s second biggest army, the People’s Liberation Army, with its 2.3 million soldiers, were ordered not to throw leftovers away, while being encouraged to reuse them to cook other dishes. All this effort was to send a clear-cut propagandistic message aimed at triggering a dramatic change in the country’s values: let people embrace consumption while government institutions become more austere. Xi will need to be careful if he wants to ensure his anti-corruption campaign does not result in disagreements between the more liberal and conservative sectors, deepening the existing factionalism within the Party. Nonetheless the regime is clear on one thing: their welfare depends on the Party’s wel-

fare, and vice versa. Thus, keeping the Party strong is the only way to avoid a widespread eradication of the privileges enjoyed by the wide network of groups that benefit from the regime.

Li Keqiang vowed the government will lead by example. It will be subject to a tight budget in order to let the public at large enjoy a better standard of living, while stressing that corrupt officials will be punished to the full extent of the law. However, he failed to address the public’s main demand: taking suitable steps to publicly disclose the wealth of high-level officials.

The Chinese would see such a move as a sign of their leaders’ true commitment towards egalitarianism.

Reforms, too soon or too late

China’s leadership does not hide the need for political reform. However, they assure the public it will happen under what they call ‘democracy with Chinese characteristics’. Under this system the separation of powers, a multi-party system and popular elecCatalan International View

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tions of the country’s leadership are not seen as possibilities. During the NPC even the outgoing Prime Minister Wen Jiabao acknowledged that the nearer China approaches modernization, the greater are the risks and challenges it faces. Wen led 10 years of rampant growth. Dazzled by GDP growth figures above 10%, China experienced an economic miracle that only slowed with the financial crisis in the West.

The current model is too fragile. Being overly dependent on exports, the country desperately needs a powerful middle class ready to embrace domestic consumption. The regime is well aware of this and they have explicitly mentioned their true commitment to working towards a new economic model that brings healthy, sustainable growth in the long term. This marks a critical stage where both economic reform and political reform are at the crossroads.

Putting the people at the centre implies a fairer model where SOEs, the very rich and local governments lose their privileges at the expense of a fairer income distribution system. The Chinese Economic Newspaper Caixin, for instance, gave a detailed account of the difficulties faced by local governments in terms of meeting the goals set by central government of increasing spending in education, health and social security while simultaneously making sufficient profits to cover expenses. It took Hu Jintao 8 of his 10 years in office to pass the blueprint for a reformed income distribution system.

Such slow progress shows the challenges facing his successor in actually putting the new system into place. Under the new regulations, ordinary citizens would enjoy an increase in their salaries, whereas wealthy SOEs would see their taxes increased by 5%, with part of the revenue being used to fund social services. Additionally, their CEOs will see their salaries and privileges subject to restrictions.

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Fairness and a better life

The new president is seen as a charismatic and reformist leader, but he is also the Secretary General of a Party which has been accustomed to leading in isolation for the past 63 years. Xi will govern with a versatile prime minister alongside him who is also believed to have a deep social conscience. Moreover, the symbolic role of vice-president is occupied by the reformist, liberal, Li Yuanchao; one of former-President Hu Jintao’s protégés who got the post even though he wasn’t a member of the 7 member Standing Committee, breaking with the tradition of previous years.

The new line-up shows how Xi is trying to consolidate his power while lobbying for much-needed reforms. The Communist Party is losing the people’s confidence and Xi is determined to win it back. He wants to move the masses and reconnect with the people with a leadership style of his own. But, in a big and powerful authoritarian regime such as China, is it possible to combine the contradictory roles of being both the Party’s and the people’s idol?

During his first speech as Head of State he called for a national renaissance, the unity of the Chinese people and the realization of the Chinese dream. Even though this patriotic sentiment is common in China, the timing of the message was of particular significance. Beijing’s goal is to develop a moderately prosperous society by the year 2020. Until a few years ago the people were moved by the motto that progress and a great Chinese nation could only be achieved through hard work and sacrifice. Conversely, nowadays China’s helpless society feels somehow cheated. Progress has given greater exposure to the privileges of the rich whereas the people realize they do not have the welfare they were promised.

Therefore, with his speech Xi wanted to underline his desire to get the country’s path of development back on track. The new leadership has many challenges to

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face on the road ahead. If the Chinese are to feel moderately prosperous they should be able to enjoy a certain level of welfare. Investment should be encouraged as a means of boosting infrastructure, making cities livelier and people’s lives easier. Accordingly, urbanization plans must be focused on lifting rural areas out of poverty.

More importantly, for all the above to work, people must be able to pursue their dreams, which means entrepreneurship must be encouraged in order to let innovation flourish. In his essay on the internal workings of the Communist Party, ‘The Secret World of China’s Communist Rulers’, Richard McGregor meticulously analyses this centralized, powerful body. The author devotes an entire chapter to the Party’s love-hate relationship with private companies. The Politburo modified its statutes allowing private entrepreneurs to join the Party as recently as 10 years ago. It was virtually a life or death decision: letting wealthy Chinese entrepreneurs in allowed both sides to mutually protect their interests. In a sign of progress, during the latest edition of the Communist Party Congress, 30 private entrepreneurs joined the delegates’ ranks (5 years ago only 17 were elected). The government’s mouthpiece, The People’s Daily, carried the testimony of Liang Wengen, a businessman and member of the Party who is also the president of Sany, a powerful heavy machinery manufacturer. Liang heads the list of the richest people in China and he has learnt the lesson by heart: the Party’s interests are the number one priority. ‘My properties,

even my life, belong to the Party. That’s a quality a communist must have’, he stressed. Even though the Party decided to recognize private enterprises it doesn’t necessarily mean it supports entrepreneurship. On the contrary, it is somewhat afraid of it. Small MediumSized enterprises are seen as independent spheres of power that will put their economic interests ahead of the Party’s, McGregor notes.

Even though the Party decided to recognize private enterprises it doesn’t necessarily mean it supports entrepreneurship For decades the Communist Party refused political reform on the grounds that the country was not ready. Development had to come first, and only after a certain level of economic progress was attained would the country be ready to embrace a freer system, the argument goes. Up to now the leadership has managed to avoid reform thanks to miraculous growth. But now that the economy is suffering from a severe slowdown, the Politburo could face some difficulties in embracing a new decade of excuses. There are many unresolved issues that make the Party’s illusion of harmony and stability falter.

Particularly in the new context where widespread access to an internet made up of social networks make it the perfect platform for people to loudly express their discontentment. The Chinese people seem ready for reform, but is the Party ready? *Iris Mir

She holds a degree in Media Studies from the Universitat Ramon Llull (Blanquerna Faculty of Communication Sciences) and a Masters in Political and Social Science, specialising in contemporary democracies from the Pompeu Fabra University. She focused her research on democracy in Southeast Asia. From 2006 to 2010 she lived in Asia working as a freelance journalist for various Spanish media outlets and she was also the China-Southeast Asia region correspondent of the Catalan radio station COMRàdio and the Catalan magazine El Temps.

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Power transition periods and the rise of China

by Lluc López-Vidal*

For more than fifty years, the strategic confrontation between the United States and the USSR ironically introduced a certain degree of order into the international system. After the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the dramatic extent of the devastation caused by such weapons sent a powerful message to policy makers, and since then states have refrained from using them, arguing that a pre-emptive nuclear strike implied mutually assured destruction. Nuclear bombs were too horrifying not to be taken seriously, as Robert McNamara, Secretary of State during the Cuban Missile crisis once asserted. This assertion led scholars of international relations to conclude that the Cold War was a tense period of ‘impossible peace and improbable war’.

However, everything changed in 1989.

Following the unexpected fall of the Berlin Wall and the dismantling of the Soviet Empire, those scholars that were not able to predict the fall of communism began to claim that a new momentum for democracy had arrived and a period of peace would follow the paroxysm of ideological confrontation of the twentieth century. Some went even further and prematurely declared that the convergence of economic, political and social systems would lead to the ‘end of history’ (See Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History, 1992). This initial period of optimism was rapidly replaced by a period in which realists warned of going ‘back to the future’, that is, to a new era where confrontation would not only fail to disappear but it would also be more likely than during the Cold War. What is more, the attacks of 11th September 2001 reinforced the idea that we have entered into a new period of disorder and dangerous turbulence, in Fred Halliday’s words.

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Considering that the international system is mainly a hierarchical one that reflects the configuration of supremacy and interest of the most powerful states, shifts in the distribution of power create a vacuum and give rise to periods of power transitions, which is exactly what we are experiencing now. In the following lines, I will briefly attempt to answer two crucial questions: How will the distribution of power during the twenty first century take shape? Who will have the leading voice in world politics? I will address these two questions by suggesting four main tenets.

The first and most basic tenet of the coming international order will be the continuation of the predominant position of the American Empire in the international system. Despite the fact that since the early nineties certain voices have warned of the decline of America’s power (see The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, 1987 by Paul Kennedy), the United States continues to be the hegemonic superpower in world politics and is ‘the only true

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global power with global reach’, as Leslie Gelb once pointed out. If we consider power as a matrix of four different variables; military, soft power, technology and economy, the United States remains predominant in at least three of these. Firstly, in 2012 Washington spent as much money on defence as all other countries put together. While American expenditure on defence was 711,000 million dollars in 2012, the next country on the list, China spent nearly 143,800 million dollars, a fifth of the US expenditure. Even though various critics have warned of the perils of ‘imperial overstretch’, currently American military power can be deployed all over the planet, as recent conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and Sudan have shown. Secondly, American power is not only able to exercise power through military means, but also through what Joseph Nye called ‘soft power’; that is, non-material aspects such as values and culture. Although the Bush administration’s unilateralism following the Iraq War in 2003 led

to a decline in the attractiveness of the United States, American culture and political values continue to influence millions of people around the world.

American cinema and its music and publishing industries spread American values around the world. Thirdly, with more than two-fifths of the world’s combined spending on research and development, the United States is the most powerful technological power in the world. The country takes first place when it comes to Nobel prizes for economics, chemistry and physics and 15 of the top 20 universities in the world are located in North America.

What is more, American universities and research institutes publish more scientific and journal articles than any other country in the world. Finally, the American economy is still the largest economy in the world, if we do not consider the EU as a single economy, accounting for 25% of the world’s economy. Nevertheless, it is in the economic realm where America’s power is most contested and the United States Catalan International View

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not faces only a financial crisis but has the highest budget and trade deficit in the world.

The first and most basic tenet of the coming international order will be the continuation of the predominant position of the American Empire in the international system The second tenet suggests that the international system will be multipolar and decentralized. To say that the United States is the only hegemon on the international stage does not mean we have a unipolar system. After the initial expectation of what Charles Krauthammer called an ‘American unipolar moment’, the emergence of rising powers and multiple centres of power (non-state actors such as transnational, NGO or terrorist groups) has eroded the ability of the US to impose its preferences unilaterally. On the one hand, since the end of the Cold War, Japan, as a declining economic superpower that has begun to recalibrate its position and role on the international stage and an uncertain and re-emerging China are not only a counterweight to American power, but they also pose a number of challenges to the world. In addition, Russia’s rise as an economic and global power and the awakening of regional countries such as Brazil and India reinforce the idea that the twenty-first century will be a century of multipolarity.

The third basic idea is that we are approaching the end of uncontested Western domination and the ‘arrival of the Asian century’, as the Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard recently stated. During the Cold War, although the ideological confrontation of the two superpowers was global in nature, the battlefield was mainly in Europe. A reconfiguration of the European map would not only have altered the balance 58

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of power but it would also have had an impact on the entire Cold War. As the realist John Mearsheimer once stated, the Cold War was a fight for the control of the European continent (see The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, 2001).

However, the new economic and political battleground in the coming century will be located in the Asia-Pacific region. Asia is and will remain the world’s most dynamic economic region, and at the same time, it will host some of the hot spots affecting regional and global security such as the Korean peninsula, Taiwan’s reunification and the Senkaku Island issue. According to a recent report of the Asian Development Bank, China, Japan, India, South Korea, Indonesia and Thailand’s share of the total world economy in 2050 will be 45% for Asia and 35% for the United States and other advanced western industrialised nations. Considering that in the early nineteenth century China and India’s economy accounted for 50% of global GDP, we should perhaps talk instead of the re-emergence of Asia as the main power axis of the planet.

Last but not least, the fourth basic tenet of the coming twenty-first century is that the rise of China will be the most important factor for the regional and global balance of power. Although this may sound like a tautology, China’s rise has been extraordinarily successful in terms of economic capabilities, a continued annual growth rate of 10% since the early 1980s, and military capabilities, China ranks second in defence expenditure at a rate of 10% since the 1990s.

In 2013, China is not only the world’s second largest economy and the biggest trading nation, but it is also Japan, the United States and the European Union’s most important trade partner. Furthermore, China is the largest holder of US treasury bonds, that is, Beijing is Washington’s largest lender.

In an era of power transition, the crucial question is whether China’s

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rise can be peaceful. Opinions regarding the nature of the rise of China can be divided into two main groups. The first group consists of realists who argue that in international relations one can never be sure about a state’s intentions; in any case, countries always have hegemonic purposes. Therefore, China will seek to push the United States out of the Asia-Pacific region, and in the end it will try to dominate Asia in the same way the United States does now.

For these realists, any rising power controlling Eurasia will necessarily become the hegemon. The second group consists of liberals who believe that China’s rise can not only be peaceful but also mutually beneficial to the United States. The core idea is that economic ties between China and the world and the growing interdependence of its economy make war unthinkable and this can only be mutually beneficial for all concerned. A peaceful rise involves a two-way process in which the rising power, China, accommodates itself to the rules and structures of international society. Moreover, according to the liberals, China will no longer be able to be an authoritarian regime, thus in the near future China will become democratic, which is the best situation for the United States. Why is a democratic China the best insurance for American interests? Democracies do not go to war with each other and world history has proven this to be true.

Which of these two antagonistic and differentiated groups is closer to the truth? The answer lies at the inter-

section of both views. In line with the aforementioned tenets, we can identify two driving forces that will determine China’s rise and its incorporation into the international system. The first is the very nature of its domestic political regime. If China engages in the international liberal system and becomes a true democracy, a Sino-American entente similar to the Japanese one will not mute rivalry but it will at least reduce conflict. Alternatively, if Beijing remains an uncertain and potentially unstable regime, China’s rise will increase the security of competition between both countries. The second driving force will be the nature of the East Asian order. Even though China’s intentions may be benign, unless most of the hot spots concerning Chinese security are solved; the Taiwan issue, Senkaku Island, the Korean nuclear problem, etc., China will be less likely to behave in a cooperative way.

We should remember that a peaceful Europe was only possible after entering a new phase in history whereby Europeans abandoned their traditional differences and decided to deconstruct the Westphalian world. Under European post-modern universalism, wars and conflicts within their borders have become far less likely. Unfortunately, the East Asian order will be dominated by a kind of ‘Eastphalia’, that is, the same principles that Europeans imposed in the last century: non-interference, emphasis on sovereignty and a formal equality between states. We hope Europe’s past will not be Asia’s future. *Lluc López-Vidal

Holds a PhD in International Relations and European Integration at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), an MA in Asian Studies at the International and Intercultural Studies Institute (UAB), and a degree in Political and Administration Sciences from the Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), in Barcelona. He is currently the senior lecturer in International Relations and Political Systems in the East Asian Studies programme run by the Arts and Humanities Department of the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya (Open University of Catalonia, UOC).

His dissertation is entitled: Cambio y continuidad en la política exterior y de seguridad de Japón (1989-2009). La transformación de la doctrina Yoshida y la adopción de una estrategia hedging ante el ascenso de China. [Change and Continuity in Japanese Foreign and Security Policy (1989-2009). The transformation of the Yoshida Doctrine and the Adoption of a Hedging Strategy Towards China]

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Interview

Montserrat Carulla ‘The Catalan people face a constant struggle against fascism’ Interviewed by Eva Piquer

Montserrat Carulla (Barcelona, 1930) is one of the best-known and most respected actresses in Catalonia. ‘The passage of time has left its mark, but it has never taken my immense desire to live’, she writes in her memoir El record és un pont al passat [Memories are a Bridge to the Past]. She feels fortunate in that, in spite of the obstacles she has had to overcome, she has been able to do the job she loves. Her one regret, however, is that the Catalan people’s desire for freedom is still to be realised. She would like to see her country achieve independence before she dies. She is convinced that the long-awaited national liberation will be accompanied by a collective Golden Age. You say that you often introduce yourself by saying: ‘I’m Montserrat Carulla, Catalan actress and nationalist’. Is Catalan independence a part of your identity?

Of course, in a very profound way. I’ve been a Catalan nationalist since I was eighteen years old, when I first became aware that our language and our culture were forbidden. I thought it was outrageous. I had lived in the shadow of the post-war period, where everything was in Spanish and they told you to ‘shut up and don’t ask questions’, until one day I said ‘that’s that, I want to speak my own language’. I began to speak in Catalan all the time, with everyone, except when I was with strangers or old people

who weren’t from here, who had come with the wave of immigration during the sixties and who genuinely didn’t understand me. Now when someone tells me they don’t understand me in Catalan, I ask how long they’ve lived here. If I went to Germany, the first thing I’d do would be to learn to say ‘good morning’, ‘goodbye’ and ‘thank you’ in German.

Interestingly, you started talking in Spanish to your children.

Yes, because my first husband worked as a dubbing artist and at that time a Spanish actor couldn’t have any trace of a Catalan accent. He suggested that Catalan International View

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we spoke to our children in Spanish to help him with his accent. I was very young and I accepted. We enrolled our children in one of the very few schools where Catalan was spoken, and their father told me that they would learn Catalan in school and in the street.

But when I went to work in Madrid I took all four children, I spoke to them in Catalan, because then the language they could learn at school and in the street was Spanish.

My parents, my grandparents and everyone who went before them were people with a unique culture, language and way of thinking. It doesn’t mean that we’re better or worse: we’re just Catalans You always make it clear that your nationalism isn’t against anyone.

Exactly, because I have nothing against Spanish people or anything against Castilian or Spanish culture.

I think they are a great people, it’s a great language and a great culture. But that doesn’t mean I have to give up my identity.

When you were awarded the Gaudí Honorary Award, you took the opportunity to remind everyone of your vision of a Catalonia which is ‘socially just, culturally prosperous and free as a nation’.

It’s my great dream, yes. That we become a free country, a free nation and a free state. I’ve got a bottle of cava in the fridge to open on the day we celebrate Catalonia’s independence. I’ve had to change the bottle a few times.

Do you think you’ll be able to open it soon? How do you see the sovereignty process that’s going on at the moment?

I think we’ve made some progress, but we still have a lot of fighting to do, 62

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look at what the Spanish are saying to try and make us give up. They’ve even begun to promise us stuff so we don’t leave: telling us they’ll make up for it a little more financially as if we’re willing to sell our identity for a bowl of rice.

We’ve been there before and we don’t want to go back. I’m optimistic because before it was only old people who were calling for independence, but now there are a lot of young people who defend our country’s freedom. The children and grandchildren of immigrants that Franco sent us in the sixties (immigration was all part of a plan) feel as Catalan as I do and they’ve even become pro-independence. A million and a half people took part in the demonstration on the 11th of September 2012. Not everyone had been born Catalan, but they all supported Catalan independence. In an independent Catalonia we’d be better off. The healthcare system, education and benefits for the needy would all work better because we would have more money. And if we needed to be more supportive, we would be. Over the years we’ve shown we’re a very supportive country. The Catalan economy is strangled by all the money we send to the rest of Spain that never comes back. Catalonia is drowning. Times are tough everywhere, but we Catalans are fighting against time and a particular set of circumstances.

Are you confident that in a referendum the ‘yes’ vote will win?

If there’s a referendum and the ‘no’ vote wins, then I’m sure a ‘yes’ will win the next time, because people who are still in favour of ‘Spanish unity’ today will see we’re not getting anywhere. Some people think we want to put up borders, but it’s not like that: I’ll still go to Madrid whenever I want, and I’ll obviously respect the Spanish as much as they’ll presumably respect us. Catalan people live in an eternal struggle against fascism; this is about freedom

Interview

from fascism. We are defending a thousand year-old country. My parents, my grandparents and everyone who went before them were people with a unique culture, language and way of thinking.

It doesn’t mean that we’re better or worse: we’re just Catalans.

Do people who are in the public eye have a responsibility to be socially engaged?

I don’t see it as an obligation, but rather as an opportunity to say what I think and what I feel. I have a platform and I make the most of it. I say out loud what a lot of people think. The darkness of the Franco regime has made us Catalans a bit cowardly. Moreover, we Catalans have always been nonconfrontational; we’ve always liked to reach an agreement without resorting to violence. And the other side aren’t so willing to reach an agreement. The Bourbons didn’t ask our permission to annex Catalonia to Spain: they came by force, and as we didn’t have an army...

Catalonia isn’t inside Spain because of a decision made by the Catalan people, but because they took all our rights

away in a war during the eighteenth century, they were stripped from us.

When your father returned from the concentration camp where he was interned following the Civil War he said, ‘defeated soldiers keep their mouths shut’. Everyone kept their mouths shut in the post-war period, in the 1940s, didn’t they?

Yes, a lot of people. We were a people that had been defeated militarily. History repeated itself: When we started to want to be ourselves, to go out on the balcony and speak about a Catalan state, the Spanish Civil War broke out. And the Catalan people, who are peaceful by nature, fell into despair and a feeling of helplessness.

Your family went hungry at that time.

During the war my father, who worked in aviation, sent us a bag of food every week or every fortnight. But during the post-war period we went hungry.

I’m not a big eater and I was really hungry. I used to come home from school feeling terribly hungry and Catalan International View

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someone had always eaten my bread ration which I kept for my tea. I never found out if it was my mother or my grandmother who ate my bread.

Things aren’t easy for people who have nothing, but often they’re difficult for people who have a lot You wrote, ‘I think that learning to cope with the setbacks at that time has helped me a lot’.

Yes, because everything shaped me, it made me stronger. I knew that things weren’t easy, I had to fight for them.

There’s always been a time in my life when a bridge has broken and I’ve had to rebuild it myself in order to keep going, and it has worked out. Things aren’t easy for people who have nothing, but often they’re difficult for people who have a lot. I don’t know how people can eat a good meal when they know that there’s a woman round the corner begging for loose change.

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You say that, ‘being born into a home without books affects you a lot’. ‘It means that life has left you in the middle of a cultural desert which is too difficult to get out of ’. You managed to find a way out.

I got out thanks to my curiosity. I always asked questions when we were eating dinner, and my father used to say, ‘shut up and eat’. As I used to ask questions and they were never answered, I found lots of answers in books. I got books from the library, I took them home, I copied them and took them back. I also started buying books in instalments. I discovered Stefan Zweig and I read everything he wrote. I’ve read a lot ever since.

Your children were born into a house full of books...

Yes, my books and especially their father’s books. He was a very cultured man. My children really appreciate books and read a lot, all four of them are well-educated but they don’t have that desperate need that I had, that anxiety to read, because you don’t appreciate the things you obtain easily.

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Many actors say they’re shy. Is that true for you?

Yes, it’s very true. Actors are timid and insecure, and maybe that’s why we do this job, because we don’t dare to show ourselves as we are, so we do it through our characters. The different characters I played when I was younger helped me to create my personality, rather than the environment in which I lived. Now I’m no longer shy: it took me many years, but I did end up shaking it off. I stopped being shy quite recently.

Which of your roles do you love the most?

I have great affection for the roles I played in three plays: Joan Oliver’s version of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion, J.B. Priestley’s Time and the Conways and La filla del mar [The Daughter of the Sea] by Àngel Guimerà.

You obviously resent the forty years of your career in films that were stolen from you.

The fascists stole them from me, yes.

They told me I’d never make a movie in Madrid again and I spent forty years without making a film there, till Pilar Miró hired me for a movie, Tu nombre envenena mis sueños [Your Name Poisons My Dreams]. When we started shooting my scene, I couldn’t speak. Pilar Miró asked me if something was wrong and I said ‘yes’, that forty years of my life had been lost and that they were the best forty years to work in films. I was a young girl, beautiful, with a good memory. I could have done so many things that they wouldn’t let me do.

For a woman of your generation, combining a career with four children can’t have been easy. Not that it is now...

It wasn’t at all easy. When I was working in Madrid I took the four kids, the suitcases and trunks and off we went

to Madrid on the train. We rented an apartment and stayed there for a while.

And when I did theatre in Barcelona, I got up very early to get the kids off to school, I gave them their breakfast, helped them get dressed and went back to sleep. We’d rehearse after lunch, do the afternoon performance, I’d drive back home on my scooter, give the children their dinner, put them to bed and go back to the Romea theatre for the evening performance. You have to be very young to do this, which I was because I married very young and had four children in four and a half years. I did it without getting tired and without thinking I was doing anything special.

The pedagogue and literary critic Joan Triadú told me that the women’s revolution had triumphed in the twentieth century. Do you agree with him?

Absolutely, we women have achieved a lot. We have a long way to go, but in many ways we’ve taken the lead. In terms of freedom of thought, for example, in being comfortable with ourselves and in education: there are more women than men at university. Before, women always depended on men.

When I went to work in Madrid I had to obtain my husband’s consent to open a bank account. You also had to have your husband’s permission to leave Spain. And if a couple separated, the man got almost everything, even the children if it was the woman who had asked for the separation. We’ve made a lot of progress. You can have a career and your husband doesn’t stop you, he doesn’t force you to stay at home.

But I’ve had children and I’ve had to give up more things than he has.

This has been going on for thousands of years, of course. It’s always been the woman who runs the house, taking care of the children and the elderly. We’re not the weaker sex. Men are amazing and I love them, but they always need Catalan International View

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women, they need a mother, a wife or a sister. They’re more dependent on us than we are on them.

Do we get wiser with time?

Over the years we gain insight and knowledge, but experience doesn’t exist, it’s useless. No aspect of your life repeats itself identically. You can’t assume that if you do a certain thing something else will happen that you’ve already experienced before, because everything changes, the moment is always different.

Culture is always the first on the receiving end. The powers that be aren’t interested in people being educated, because an educated populace is a demanding populace How do you see life now you’re over 80 years old and you’re richer in terms of memories than a future?

I’m optimistic and enthusiastic. I often forget I’m over 80. I sometimes wake up and think about everything I have to do, until I stop and say to myself, ‘Carulla you’re of a certain age, don’t go too fast or you’ll come a cropper’.

I believe that while you can do things, you have to do them. I don’t look back, I look forward.

And you’ve been adapting to new technologies. The writer Josep Maria Espinàs has resisted using a computer because he says he doesn’t need it. Meanwhile we arranged this interview by email...

Espinàs isn’t the only one: my husband also uses a typewriter. When people started talking about computers, there was a kind of trade show in Montjuïc.

I went along and saw an exhibition of different brands, I got them to tell me about them and I left with a computer.

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I put it on my desk, I plugged it in and I said to myself, ‘now what’? It was before Windows, you wrote stuff and you lost it, I didn’t know what was going on... but I bought the computer, I knew it was the future. I didn’t want to miss the bus. If you don’t catch things in time it’s too late.

Do you think the human race progresses?

Yes, it’s been progressing throughout the centuries. We’ve taken steps forward and steps back, humanity has its positives and its negatives, we’re not all equal, there’s good and evil, there are people who are supportive and constructive and people who are destructive and selfish. But overall we are progressing.

Culture is one of the areas which is suffering most from the economic crisis.

Culture is always the first on the receiving end. The powers that be aren’t interested in people being educated, because an educated populace is a demanding populace, it’s less easy to manipulate. This is a problem with all governments, perhaps the Left are more in favour of culture, but not always those who get to the top.

Do you feel you’ve received the recognition you deserve?

I’ve received a great deal of recognition, but I’ve no idea if I deserve it.

From both the public and the critics?

I don’t recall any critics that have been too harsh on me. It must have happened at one time or another, but I don’t remember. I almost always get good reviews. And the public have been wonderful to me. When I walk down the street, people stop me, they congratulate me...

Do you long for anonymity?

No, because I’m the one that chose this job. I don’t understand the actors

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who are bothered by being recognised in the street and people coming up to them. They could have chosen another profession. If you choose to be on display, you can’t complain when people recognise you and are excited to talk to you, I find it ridiculous. Sometimes I’m in a hurry, and I say so, but I always have time for people who stop me in the street, and I get stopped a lot. How can you get angry with someone who comes up to you to tell you they’ve seen you act and you’ve made them happy?

At the end of your book, it says: ‘Nowhere is it written that the daughter of humble workers, of a family that had just lost a war, could afford to devote herself to the theatre, let alone the theatre in Catalan’.

I’ve been very lucky. There are people who are just as talented as I am who haven’t managed to get where I am. I know some very good people who are sitting at home without any work. At least I have the peace of mind not to have to think I’m mediocre and I’m taking someone else’s job, I’m a good actress and I do my work honestly.

I’m outraged when I see people who are mediocre and they’ve got their job thanks to a relative or a political party.

Have you been through periods when they haven’t offered you any roles, when the phone didn’t ring?

Yes, I once went a whole year without working. All that time I was never able to pick up the phone to ask for work.

I’m not telling you this as if it was something heroic: I think that when you need something you have to pick up the phone and ask for it. It was

during the seventies. In the mornings I went to a clinic where I was a supply nurse and in the evenings I used to bind books. I’ve had hard times like everyone else, this profession is very irregular. I remember one time when we came back from Saus, my house in the Baix Empordà, and I told my kids that we only had sixteen pesetas left. Half an hour later Ventura Pons called me offering me a job in Portugal.

You’ve said you don’t want to retire, that they’ll have to drag you off.

Maybe they will end up dragging me off. I want to work while I can. I haven’t stopped working since I was fifteen years old, except for the nine years I spent at home when the children were very young. The idea of sitting on the sofa watching TV fills me with dread.

You’re working on a new volume of your memoirs.

That’s right, it’ll be called Davant de l’horitzó [Facing the Horizon], because that’s where I am right now. I’m aware that I’m facing the horizon. And there’s nothing behind it. When I disappear over the horizon, everything will have finished.

Are you afraid of death?

No, not at all. I’d be very afraid if I was a believer, I’d be wondering if I’d been good enough to go to heaven. But I don’t believe in heaven or hell or purgatory. This life is heaven, hell and purgatory. I’ve lived in heaven, at times I’ve been scorched a little, but I’ve lived in heaven.

*Eva Piquer Writer and cultural journalist. Works for several newspapers and magazines. Has been a lecturer at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and a New York news correspondent. Won the 2002 Josep Pla prize for her novel Una victòria diferent (A Different Victory). Also author of several books, including La noia del temps (The Weather Girl), Alícia al país de la televisió (Alice in Television Land) and No sóc obsessiva, no sóc obsessiva, no sóc obsessiva (I’m Not Obsessive, I’m Not Obsessive, I’m Not Obsessive). Her latest book is called La feina o la vida (Life or work).

Catalan International View

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Opinion

‘What’s up with Catalonia?’, more than a book

by Liz Castro*

Of course everyone knows that 1.5 million people took to the streets in Barcelona on September 11th, 2012. It was in all the papers. Indeed, the mere fact that Catalonia was being covered by the foreign press at all was a news item in itself, discussed widely in Catalan papers. After years and years of explaining what Catalonia is to my compatriots here in the United States, I, too, was amazed and pleased by the sudden plethora of articles that mentioned not ‘a region in Northeastern Spain’ but ‘Catalonia’.

But I’ll admit my happiness was shortlived. The more I read (and I searched for every last article) the more I found that the articles were practically identical. And it wasn’t just because the majority were syndicated from wire services. Each one said that Catalonia was tired of sending so much of its tax money to support poorer regions, and that Catalonia was heavily in debt and had had to ask Madrid to bail it out.

The better articles mentioned that Catalans speak another language. And that was about it.

Catalonia’s story was being told in two disparate ways: exhaustively but exclusively in Catalan to a Catalan audience at home, and hopelessly, superficially through the filter of mostly Madrid-based correspondents for those abroad As the situation unfolded, and President Mas called for snap elections for late November, I watched, wondering if the press would go deeper into the story, widening the scope and getting a broader picture. This they did to a small extent, pursuing angles like football and language to a wider degree. But not enough. Once again, Catalonia’s 68

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story was being told in two disparate ways: exhaustively but exclusively in Catalan to a Catalan audience at home, and hopelessly, superficially through the filter of mostly Madrid-based correspondents for those abroad.

The coverage of the November parliamentary election results was particularly telling. In Madrid, the headlines screamed that President Mas had lost, that the push for sovereignty was over, and the PP congratulated itself on its victory. In Catalonia, and indeed in many foreign papers, the story was much more complicated: pro-independence forces had won the majority of seats in parliament, but since Convergència had both lost 12 seats and maintained the lion’s share (50), no one was sure how it would be able to form a government.

And although it’s true that the foreign press mostly got the headlines right, they were unable to explain what was going on behind the scenes.

It was a few days after the elections, as I listened to Catalan radio in my car in Massachusetts, that it occurred to me that I might be able to add to the debate. Probably many people listening to talk radio have the same reaction!

But in my case, I not only had a solid background in both digital and print publishing, but because I had already published two books about Catalonia

Opinion

in English and was an avid Twitter user on the subject, I also had a number of contacts who would possibly be willing to collaborate.

So on November 29th 2012, I sent out an email asking for contributions to a book that would explain in English what was really going on in Catalonia.

I made it clear that the aim wasn’t to elicit help from foreign agents, or to rely on them in any way, but that it wouldn’t hurt a bit if the outside world at least knew what was going on. It is a curious side effect of the language issue that most information about the independence movement is published in Catalan, which, like it or not, is inaccessible to most people on the planet.

The response was immediate.

Within hours I had seven contributors, and within three days I had 20.

Almost everyone I asked responded positively, and suggested other writers. I treated it a bit like a potluck dinner, not specifying too closely what people should bring, and trusting to serendipity that we wouldn’t have too many entrées and not enough desserts.

What was remarkable was the calibre of my contributors: highly respected journalists, writers, community and political leaders, linguists, economists, social and political scientists, and more. Each one said they were thrilled

to be involved in such a project. I was even able to convince the President of Catalonia, Artur Mas, to write the prologue.

One of my aims with the book was not only to explain the situation more thoroughly, but also to give a current, up-to-date analysis, something out of the reach of traditional publishers with 9 and 12 month lead times. I asked my contributors to send me their articles by December 13th and had grand dreams of getting the book out by the end of the year. That was clearly overambitious. The deadline slipped to early January, but as the translations came trickling in, I took advantage of the time and began to translate them into English. And came up with a title: ‘What’s up with Catalonia?’.

Meanwhile, I started worrying about how I was going to get the book read. I had published two earlier books in English about Catalonia, ‘Barcelona, Catalonia: A View from the Inside’,

by Matthew Tree, and ‘What Catalans Want: Could Catalonia be Europe’s Catalan International View

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Opinion

Next State?’, by Toni Strubell and Lluís Brunet, and though they are excellent books, frankly I had trouble getting them noticed. More than 170,000 new books are published each year in the United States. It’s not easy to catch a prospective reader’s eye.

One of my aims with the book was not only to explain the situation more thoroughly, but also to give a current, up-to-date analysis Earlier in the year, I had watched the progress of Amanda Palmer’s phenomenal success with crowdfunding on Kickstarter. Although she raised more than a million dollars, I was especially impressed by how she galvanized support among her followers. Supporters didn’t pledge money and then go away to await the album’s release, they remained committed to the project, anxious and interested in updates, and spent a fair amount of time spreading the word about her music on Twitter and Facebook.

This was just what I needed. However, Palmer has 800,000 Twitter followers, and Kickstarter and her music are both American phenomena. I knew that Americans were not yet interested in my book, in other words, that they weren’t the sponsors, but rather the ‘sponsees’.

So, I decided to organize a crowdfunding project on a Catalan website called Verkami. The goal wasn’t so much the creation of the book itself, which I could bootstrap with minimal funds, but getting the book into the hands of nonCatalan readers. My idea was to ask Catalans, who had a vested interest in getting their story out, not only to help finance the distribution of free copies of the book to libraries, political leaders, and newspapers, but also to connect me with interested parties all over the world. And it worked brilliantly.

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Crowdfunding works via tiered rewards. For 5 euros, you get an electronic copy, for 10 you can pick up a print copy in a local bookstore. But for me the key reward was that for a donation of 25 euros, a sponsor received not only a print copy for themselves, but also a second print copy to be sent to the recipient of their choice. Over the course of the campaign, almost 600 pledged about $15,000 to help me send books all over the world, and then gave me the addresses where I should send them, mostly in the United States, Great Britain, Germany and Australia.

At the same time, thanks to the project’s running total and deadline, people began to talk about the book and the campaign and encourage their friends to sign up. In mid January, the project started getting coverage in the media, appearing in major Catalan newspapers and online portals like El Periódico, Ara, VilaWeb, and Directe. cat. They liked the video explaining my project that I filmed out in the cold Massachusetts winter with both the American and Catalan flags flapping in the wind behind me.

I spent most of my time translating the articles, most of which had been written in Catalan, into English.

I have been writing and editing computer books for more than 20 years, and I’ve learned how to edit, format, design, lay out, and even index books.

I did send the book out to a professional proofreader, but everything else I did myself. I had the final files ready

by February 2nd.

The miracle of the new publishing paradigm is that you really don’t need very much money to bring a book into existence. Gone are the days in which you have to guess how many books you’re going to sell ahead of time, make a substantial investment to buy those books, find a reasonable place to store them, and then deal with the packaging, mailing, and distribution. The combina-

Opinion

tion of digital publishing and print on demand makes all this obsolete.

Print on demand (POD) is an amazing phenomenon. You start by emailing a PDF of your book to the POD company. You then order a proof of the book to make sure everything is as it should be. In the case of What’s up with Catalonia? I uploaded the PDF on a Friday and received a proof of the book (which it should be noted looks exactly like a regular book except with the word ‘proof ’ on the last page) on Tuesday morning. Once you approve the proof, the book becomes part of the POD company’s catalogue, and can be ordered by any of the associated distributors or retailers.

That means that once What’s up with Catalonia? is up on Amazon, for example, and someone orders a copy, Amazon sends a notice to the POD company to print the book while collecting the retail price from the customer (discounted, if they so choose).

Amazon then sends the wholesale price (specified by the publisher, me in this case) to the POD company, which then subtracts the print price, and credits the publisher with the difference. The key point is that the publisher doesn’t have to put any money up front for the books. The per-book price is surely not as cheap as if I printed 10,000 copies at a time, but it’s entirely reasonable and the bonus of not having to finance or store 10,000 copies more than makes up for the minor difference.

What’s up with Catalonia? officially went on sale on Feburary 25th, a day after the crowdsourcing campaign came to a close. We presented the book to a standing-room-only crowd on February 27th in the Palau Robert in Barcelona.

This helped generate more press coverage for the book, which in turn made it easier to encourage local Barcelona bookstores, typically cautious with new books from small foreign presses, to take a chance on the book. Three of the stores that carry the book in Barcelona have already reordered additional copies.

Since its publication, I have spent a fair bit of time fulfilling all of the requests for the book generated by the crowdfunding project, and we have already distributed almost 600 books, to every continent, and to a wide variety of countries. The book is beginning to be adopted by public libraries, which is one of the major goals, at least here in the United States. But there is still a long way to go.

On April 21st I helped present What’s up with Catalonia? during the Sant Jordi Book and Rose Day celebration sponsored by the Catalan Institute of America at the 86th Street Barnes & Noble in New York City. I also gave a presentation at Harvard University on April 23rd and at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst on April 24th. The book will be available at a number of bookstores and independent stands during the April 23rd Sant Jordi celebration in Barcelona. I have begun the Booksandroses.com website to catalogue all of the Sant Jordi Celebrations across the world, and hopefully to encourage people to include What’s up with Catalonia? in their programs.

We’re not all the way there yet, but the combination of incisive, expert writing, digital and POD publishing, crowdfunding, and social networks have both made this book possible and brought it to the attention of thousands of people. More will follow. *Liz Castro

is a bestselling author of books on computers and a publisher at Catalonia Press, which specializes in books on Catalonia in English. She divides her time between Western Massachusetts and Barcelona, and never spends quite enough time in either.

Catalan International View

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Green Debate

Responsibilities, consequences and alternatives to the illegal exploitation of Congolese coltan

by Iris Boadella*

We live in a world in constant motion, where the distances between people are becoming shorter and shorter and information circulates without limits or borders. Everyone appreciates the opportunities and challenges offered by communication technologies, but they can also have a negative effect, not only due to their availability but also thanks to their production and consumption. These new technologies require mining, processing, handling and marketing. Such processes have serious environmental, social, cultural, and human consequences. Moreover they can also serve to generate conflicts. Such is the situation with coltan, a key mineral for the electronic industry. It is estimated that some 80% of the world’s coltan reserves are to be found in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), a country which has been immersed in conflict for years, and where ironically only 1% of the population has access to the internet1. Globally, states and multinationals trade with the DRC, to one degree or another, thus profiting directly or indirectly from the illegal mining of coltan and tolerating the constant violation of the fundamental rights of the country’s inhabitants.

[1] Source: Radio Okapi [2] To learn more about the causes and consequences of the conflict see: www.perillderiqueses. org or http://escolapau. uab.cat/.

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Gold, diamonds, cobalt, copper, coltan, timber and land suitable for agriculture combine to potentially make the DRC one of the richest countries in Africa in terms of minerals and forest resources. However, the history of this country in the heart of Africa has been marked by the constant pillaging of its resources, from the time of Leopold II (when it is estimated that over 10 million Congolese died from forced labour, starvation, and systematic extermination) to the present day. The conflict currently affecting the DRC involves multiple factors, participants Catalan International View

and countries which hinder its satisfactory resolution and the participation of local people in sharing the profits of their own resources: the colonial legacy, tensions between different communities, the presence of Congolese and foreign armed groups, the need for genuine reform of the Congolese army, the situation in the Great Lakes region, particularly Rwanda’s involvement, the role of the international community, corruption, impunity and of course the control of land and natural resources2.

An analysis of the situation on the ground shows that the extraction

Green Debate

of natural resources in north eastern DRC has become a powerful cause of war and it is helping to promote and prolong one of the most lucrative conflicts of modern times. It has led to over five million deaths, the displacement of more than two million people, created more than 300,000 victims of sexual violence3 and is responsible for the continuing human rights violations of the entire population.

The most important mines are located in eastern DRC. The main belligerents, all the armed factions and even the Congolese armed forces themselves

are fighting over unlimited access to the minerals. They obtain control of part of the territory by controlling a mining area. The mining is conducted through the use of force and out and out violence and profits are extracted from the mines through acts of extortion and the imposition of illegal ‘taxes’4.

These practices are neither new nor unknown. There has been an outcry about them for years. Eleven years ago United Nations reports gave details on the local and foreign armed groups, the Congolese armed forces, the local businesses5,neighbouring countries and Catalan International View

[3] It is very difficult to precisely calculate the actual number of victims of sexual violence, but all the studies and reports are alarming. For example, according to a report by the charity Heal Africa, between January and June of 2011, more than two thousand five hundred people were raped in the province of North Kivu alone, with 30% of them children. According to a study published in the May 2011 American Journal of Public Health, more than 400,000 women and girls between 15 and 45 were raped in the DRC over a 12-month period between 2006 and 2007.

In contrast the figures published in United Nations reports covering this period are much lower.

[4] See the summary of the ‘Not with my Mobile Phone!’ campaign conference: Reflections on Congolese Civil Society in Light of the Barcelona Mobile World Congress’ with the participation of the Congolese activist Moïse Kambere Kayitambya. Available at www. perillderiqueses.org [5] Multinational companies have also been involved in this situation, many have benefited from the illegal trade in minerals. The panels of experts which compiled these UN reports name over 80 companies that violate the OECD guidelines, such as America Mineral Fields, De Beers, Fortis, Georges Forrest international, Afrique, etc.

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Green Debate

various Western and Asian multinationals which were directly or indirectly involved in this lucrative business5.

Congolese minerals have long been an extremely tempting business, and more so nowadays with the value of coltan, an essential component in the manufacture of electronic devices.

‘Alliances between the militias and the various armed factions are made and broken based on control over the mining region’.

The social, human, economic and environmental impact of the extraction of coltan

[6] For more information on the radioactivity of coltan see: Lunar, Rosario; Martínez Jesús, El coltán un ‘mineral’ estratégico, El País, 2007.

[7] More information: www.raisehopeforcongo/; www.globalewitness.org and UN reports.

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It is essential we ask whether the development of trade in Congolese mineral resources, and Coltan and the technological business that surrounds it in particular, meets the human, environmental and socioeconomic needs of the Congolese people. The impact of its exploitation and extraction in the present circumstances are made worse in the context of the conflict that exists in the eastern DRC, home to the largest mines and where transport and communication infrastructure is minimal.

Overall, the mining industry includes exploration, exploitation and the transport of raw materials. These all have structural impacts (economic, social, political and cultural) and other specific effects (health, food and environment).

Here I will focus mainly on major social and ecological effects, although these are often inter-related with the cultural, economic and political.

The extraction of coltan is characterized by corruption, abuse and the vulnerability of the local population.

Mining has multiple negative effects on health and safety. The extraction of this mineral results in the use of forced labour and child labour, respiratory diseases, fatal accidents and the dangers Catalan International View

of radioactivity6. Workers rarely have a contract, they lack social protection, regular working hours, medical care, training or tools and they are paid miserable wages.

Mining causes alarming environmental concerns, such as its impact on resources (water pollution, reduced soil productivity due to an accelerated process of destruction and erosion), threats to endangered species, the intensification of hunting and deforestation. Obviously, the main enemy of the Congolese forest is deforestation, mainly caused by industrial logging and uncontrolled illegal operations, which see the forest as merely a reservoir of millions of dollars. The DRC’s forests are part of the second largest rainforest in the world. They are home to a unique biodiversity and are a vital source of food, medicine and other basic services for more than 40 million Congolese.

The practice of mining for coltan and other minerals has affected the land and Man’s relationship with it. It has introduced new ways of life and the land’s economic orientation has changed. Often this is not accompanied by any form of social investment to support the local communities which face deteriorating living conditions despite the lucrative rewards of the coltan trade. The risk of violence and looting by militias also increases, leading to social insecurity, as does the massive influx of migrants to the mining areas, causing a serious impact on livestock, agriculture and the economy’s ability to sustain itself. In addition, clashes between different armed groups force people to flee, leaving behind their land, having an obvious impact on traditional agriculture, the local economy and the organization of communities.

Stop the clandestine trade in Congolese minerals!

The extraction of coltan from Congolese mines is only the first step in a

Green Debate

trade that violates human rights and which has serious social, cultural, economic and environmental effects. It is a trade which involves the shady world of international economic and political transactions. The minerals are transported from the mines to trading offices in the area. The export companies, known locally as Comptoirs, buy the minerals and sell them to buyers. The main Comptoirs based in Goma and Bukavu buy, sell and export minerals which are either produced by armed groups or from which they at least receive some benefit7. The minerals leave the country through its porous borders, across countries such as Rwanda, with large quantities being smuggled. They arrive at refineries where they are processed into metals. Once this occurs it becomes impossible to verify which region the metal originates from. Finally, coltan comes into our hands transformed into mobile phones, MP3 players, video game controllers and so on.

At present there are various local and international initiatives aimed at providing transparency to the trade and putting an end to the illegal profits that fuel conflict and allow the purchase and sale of arms from other countries in the region. In July 2010, the US government (thanks to a lobbying campaign started in 2007 by several organizations, including the Enough Project) drafted a law known as the Dodd-Frank Act Conflict Minerals that seeks to ensure that US companies do not use minerals that come from the conflict. It came into force on April 1st, 2011. Other initiatives in the inter-

national arena include UN resolution 1952 (2010) which defines the due diligence, the recommendations made by the OECD, or in Congolese terms the directive passed by the Congolese government (September 2011) to demand due diligence as defined by resolution 1952.

Nevertheless, there is still a long way to go for these measures to have a real, effective impact, for European, Asian and Americans companies to play by the same rules, for tough mechanisms to punish violations of the rules and, for the Congolese to obtain better governance and put an end to corruption. For Congolese civil organizations to be given a voice and become part of the solution and for the main objectives behind the mining sector reforms to be to improve the quality of life of the Congolese people.

The solutions to the problem also involve the final link in the chain: the consumer, ourselves. Now that Barcelona is home to the Mobile World Congress until 2018, we have a unique opportunity in Catalonia (thanks to the presence of multinationals and the national and international media) to show the world that based on awareness, individual responsibility and collective political will we can contribute to the fight against impunity, self-interest and in defence of human rights and actively participate in building a more just world. As consumers and citizens we have the opportunity to demand that our politicians act coherently and responsibly. Join the ‘Not with my Mobile Phone!’ campaign8.

[8] The ‘Not with my Mobile Phone!’ campaign, organised by the network of organizations in support of the DRC: http://entitatscongo.blogspot.com.es/

*Iris Boadella head of the ‘Congo, Danger of Wealth’ campaign of the League of Human Rights. www.perillderiqueses.org

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Barcelona Echoes

Asia, in Barcelona’s sights

by Miquel Mateu*

The Catalan capital has an economy blessed with a high degree of openness, which in recent years has continued to broaden its horizons. Barcelona, the ancient Mediterranean metropolis, which had a strong presence in the region during the Middle Ages, is meeting the twenty-first century with a firm desire to be a city of global importance. The Barcelona brand is internationally recognized and the strength of our international business is demonstrated by the fact that exports Catalonia’s represent a quarter of the Spanish total.

Meanwhile, this century the world is undergoing a geographical transformation thanks to a shift in the focus of power towards the Pacific, rapidly centring itself on Asia. Asia has become the great socio-economic engine and most prominently of all, China, more than a country, almost a continent, has gradually established itself as the world’s leading economy.

Clearly Asia is high on the agenda, China in particular, given its strength and potential Another change that has taken place over the last two decades is that Barcelona’s international exposure has transformed the way the city looks, placing it among the most cosmopolitan cities in the world. A large number of im76

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migrants from all over the world have made the city their home, in excess of two hundred languages are spoken here and the number of people of Asian origin has increased in recent years. According to figures from 2012, the largest group of immigrants are from Pakistan, followed by Italy, with China in third place. Catalonia has the highest number of Chinese citizens, accounting for 28.4% of the total for Spain. Their numbers have risen by more than 200% during the 2003 to 2013 period. According to these same figures, as of January 2012 Asian communities represented 22.2% of all immigrants in the city, a significant percentage. As a consequence of living here they also help spread Barcelona’s name in their country of origin.

In recent years Barcelona has developed a policy of building bridges with Asia. This has resulted in twin-

Barcelona Echoes

ning agreements and partnerships with numerous Asian cities, such as Busan (Korea) which is now celebrating its 30th anniversary, Kobe ( Japan) a relationship that has lasted 20 years and Shanghai (China), among other Asian cities. On the one hand these agreements allow us to have a better understanding of the region, while on the other, they serve to strengthen our city’s presence as another metropolitan area which performs a similar role. Since the 1980s Catalonia has been the benchmark of the state in terms of the Japanese presence, a strategy which Barcelona has adopted as a city. Our city council has established relationships with the major cities in the area and organized missions.

These always have a high business and trade content with an emphasis on the economy, underlining how ours

is based on research, innovation, new technology and creativity. This image has allowed us to become the world leader in fields such as the mobile phone industry, by becoming the Mobile World Capital and home to the Mobile World Congress until 2018, and smart cities, with the celebration of the Smart Cities Expo World Congress. This event is celebrating its third year and will feature representatives from 82 countries from the five continents and is expecting more than 7,000 visitors. Such a global image means Barcelona is in turn a magnet for both public and private delegations from countries all over Asia. They visit us to learn about the best practices which have been implemented in our city, from urban planning, waste management and sustainability to forms of government Catalan International View

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and contact with the public and their participation.

Clearly Asia is high on the agenda, China in particular, given its strength and potential for growth. Our capital needs to appreciate the progress this great Asian nation has made. China now has the world’s second largest economy after the United States, and it is fast catching up. In fact, since 2010, China has become the world’s number one exporting nation. This is the inevitable consequence of having a competitive, diversified industrial base and thanks to having oriented its economy towards greater openness and a strong market orientation, as was the case when China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001. This greater openness has a reciprocal impact in that China’s relationship with other economies impacts on its own: the country is already beginning to feel the effects of a housing bubble and it sees there is the need to compensate for a trade balance which is excessively skewed towards its export capacity. Opening up to the outside also involves confronting issues such as the fight against corruption, increasing social and regional inequalities and the deterioration of the environment. These are areas which the newly-elected President Xi Jinping has signalled as among the main challenges to be overcome.

Barcelona has its sights set on Asia and is keen to be considered a valuable partner on the road to collaboration between the two global powers, Asia and Europe The comarques (counties) surrounding Barcelona are an important part of Spain’s business relationship with the Asian giant, since they account for 30% of its imports and 19.6% of its exports.

It should be noted that our exports to 78

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China increased by 31% in 2012 compared to 2011. The Chinese presence in the Barcelona area has been consolidated by entrepreneurs who run small businesses primarily in the areas of distribution, the restaurant sector and other services. Six large state-owned companies also have a presence here: Baosteel and Minmetals from the industrial sector, China Shipping and COSCO representing China’s logistics industry and the recent addition of the ICBC bank. Also worthy of note is the huge investment made by Hutchinson in the new container terminal in Barcelona’s port.

Needless to say, in return China is currently Barcelona’s biggest customer in Asia. With respect to our investments, there are currently around 300 companies in China, most of which are concentrated in the automotive and textile businesses or legal and consultancy sectors. In the 2005 to 2010 period Catalonia accounted for more than 37% of Spain’s investment in China.

China has therefore earned special attention from our city council, due to its development, not only on a global level, but in terms of its relationship with Catalonia. A consequence of this approach has been the agreements we have made with various cities: Ningbo (1995), Shanghai (2006), Guangzhou (2003), Hong Kong (2005), Xi’an (2009) Yiwu (2010), Rizhao (2010) and Wenzhou (2011). All the agreements serve to strengthen our relationship, and also to initiate cooperation in strategic areas such as tourism, logistics, design and commerce, among others. They are the result of Barcelona’s commitment to becoming Europe’s southern gateway with respect to trade with Asia, and in the future the main gateway to the European market thanks to the infrastructure projects which are either underway or planned. In this regard we need only

Barcelona Echoes

rely on the fulfilment of commitments by the Spanish state.

We have now reached a stage where we need to review the contents of these agreements and establish new priorities and specific development initiatives.

This was the main focus of a trip to China undertaken by Barcelona’s Mayor, Xavier Trias, in mid-2012 which allowed him to visit Shanghai, Beijing, Hong Kong and Shenzhen. Mayor Trias was able to meet with government representatives and business people in these cities and launch a series of cooperation projects in numerous fields, some of which have already borne fruit, such as the ICBC bank’s decision to locate itself in the Catalan capital, as mentioned earlier.

Looking to the future, the Barcelona city council is considering working to create the conditions necessary to improve trade and business relations with China. We wish to encourage those areas that will allow our companies to approach the Chinese market and, likewise, to enable potential Chinese companies to invest in our city, in whichever sectors they consider to be strategic, thus enhancing our productive economy. Tourism and sports management are also areas of special interest. In terms of sports management, our city possesses key knowledge, in both the public and the private sector.

In the case of tourism, large numbers of Chinese now travel and therefore Barcelona’s cultural and leisure activities and our position in the cruise ship market are all attractive to this important growing tourism. In the meeting held by the Mayor of Barcelona, Xavier

Trias, and the Mayor of Beijing, Guo Jinglong, Barcelona agreed to be part of the core promoters of the World Tourism Cities Federation, an initiative that aims to promote sustainable tourism worldwide. During the visit there was also discussion as to numerous collaboration projects in terms of urban planning and management, and social and cultural policies.

In summary, the intended objectives are clear and of crucial importance for the future of our city: • We wish to promote Barcelona as the capital of Catalonia and the economic capital of the Mediterranean and Europe’s gateway for Chinese companies.

• We are working to attract Chinese investment.

• We are participating in the promotion of global sustainable tourism, while also working to attract an increased flow of Chinese tourists to Barcelona.

• We have begun to collaborate with several Chinese cities in the areas of logistics, cultural and sports management, urban planning and social policy.

Finally, we have a strong desire to promote relations with the Chinese community in Barcelona, as well as other communities of Asian origin, in order to facilitate their participation in our open and welcoming society. Barcelona has its sights set on Asia and is keen to be considered a valuable partner on the road to collaboration between the two global powers, Asia and Europe.

*Miquel Mateu is director of Barcelona City Council’s Asia-Pacific Program for the Department of International Relations and Cooperation

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Universal Catalans

Pere Casaldàliga and support for the poor

by Jaume Botey*

In this limited space I only have room to discuss one aspect of Pere Casaldàliga’s personality, one which I feel has most profoundly defined his life: the evangelical commitment to the Church of the poor. Of the many events that one could relate, I shall begin with his visit to persecuted Nicaragua.

During the eighties, this tiny country was the birthplace of a unique cultural, political, anthropological and religious experience. The generous, euphoric and ideologically open Sandinistas had won the elections following forty years of the Somoza dictatorship. They loudly proclaimed that ‘there is no contradiction between Christianity and revolution’. This was to be the catalyst for an unstoppable wave of previously-hidden popular energy, in health, education, special education centres, agriculture, housing, cooperatives and the mixed economy. It was also the practice of community faith. For many years major groups of Christians had lived their faith in this way. The best-known group was the Solentiname community, heavily bombed by Somoza, who had Ernesto Cardenal, a poet and Trappist monk as its driving force.

The spirit of the Vatican Council took hold, with its proclamation that the poor were ‘God’s chosen ones’.

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Also in evidence were the ideas and the spirit behind the 1968 Synod of Latin American Bishops in Medellin, which proclaimed the Christian’s need for compromise in changing unjust structures and the possibility of experiencing faith in small communities, as was already the case in Brazil. Three ministers in the new government were priests: the Culture Minister, Ernesto Cardenal, the Foreign Minister, Miguel d’Escoto and the Minister of Education and the driving force behind the literacy campaign, Fernando Cardenal.

Liberation Theology was present in many ways: the first popular communities embodying the Kingdom’s evangelical expression, places in which justice, truth and peace bore fruit; the UCA or Central American University, the Centro Valdivieso, a cultural space led by foreign intellectuals such as Giulio Girardi and François Houtart, which reflected on this beautiful experience. This led to the saying ‘Nicaragua,

Universal Catalans

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Universal Catalans

trinchera teológica’ (Nicaragua, a theological frontline). Undoubtedly, the expression that summed up all these groups and experiences was a song entitled La Misa Campesina (the Peasant Mass) by Carlos Mejía Godoy y los de Palacagüina. It had an impressive theological content and an emotional force rooted in a unique way of being. When they sang Vos sos el Dios de los pobres...

(You’re the God of the Poor...) one understood exactly what they meant.

His texts have become classics of embodied mysticism, of kindness, as a reading of history as a place to see God, of a theology and spirituality born out of the life and suffering of the poor

For this reason people came to see Liberation Theology as a major contributor to popular identity and resistance against the Empire, both within and without, of Somosa’s landowners and the US. Soon Reagan was to initiate his so-called ‘low intensity conflict’ by funding an army of mercenaries, the Contras, in order to cause chaos and destruction. They systematically destroyed the humble achievements of the Revolution: bridges, cooperatives, Managua’s Corinto port and food reserves. In addition the incipient, grassroots communities were subject to persecution, torture and disappearances.

The period of greatest tension between the Church and the Sandinistas occurred in 1983 on the occasion of Pope John Paul II’s visit to the country.

It gave us the image of John Paul II, barely off the plane, waving an authoritarian finger over a kneeling Ernesto Cardenal, compelling him to abandon his position as minister. It was typical of his stern, exclusive attitude. Thus the twentieth-century Pope who most di82

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rectly intervened in policies in favour of the powerful ordered another member of the church to stop intervening in policies in favour of the poor! It was a taste of what was to come when mass was held the next day: the public cried out for the Pope to pray for the victims, and he refused.

Since it was not possible to take Nicaragua’s protests to the UN or The Hague Tribunal, in order to draw international attention to their plight, the Foreign Minister Miguel d’Escoto, began an extraordinary ‘Fast for Peace and Against the United States’ Terrorist Policies’. It took place in 1985, in the parish of Monsignor Lezcano, in the very heart of Managua. He was visited

by Bishop Pere as a mark of friendship and solidarity on one of his few foreign trips outside Brazil. He had written a great deal about Nicaragua, NicaraguaNicaragüita (Nicaragua-little Nicaragua) which in spite of its poverty had dared to confront the great Empire and he wished to be personally present among the poor and persecuted.

Visiting Nicaragua at that time was an unusual intra-ecclesial act of bravery. It was not a simple matter to challenge the Episcopal Conference of Nicaragua and its president, Cardinal Miguel Obando y Bravo of Managua, and above all Pope John Paul II’s accusatory finger. They were all US allies, virulently anti-Sandinista and against the church of the poor. The condemnation of the Vatican and the provocation caused by John Paul II’s unfortunate visit caused a great deal of discontentment among the poor of Latin America in the church as well as for the growing number of sects which in a short space of time won over the majority groups.

In spite of the distress that it caused him, Bishop Pere has never split from the Church. His texts aimed at a small population in Nicaragua and the whole of Central America have become classics of embodied mysticism, of kindness,

Universal Catalans

as a reading of history as a place to see God, of a theology and spirituality born out of the life and suffering of the poor.

This resulted in his critical attitude towards the structure of the Church, though it never made him resentful.

Before his ad limina visit he wrote to John Paul II in a candid criticism of his way of exercising the papacy and the distancing between the Church and worldly problems. The letter was written out of fraternity, by a brother who feels a brother. It spoke plainly, but with no desire to offend, out of humility.

These are evangelical attitudes, far from the petty, ingratiating approach of the ecclesiastical majority. Recently, following the election of Pope Francisco in March of this year, one realises that, without transition, the same people who less than a week ago were singing Pope Ratzinger’s praises for his uncompromising approach, are today

singing praises for the open approach shown by the new Pope. In the same way as employees need to get on well with their superiors, even the sectors of the episcopate that are more closely tied to power, are suddenly speaking of transforming the Church into a ‘Church of the poor’.

Pere’s words have never been irresponsible or opportunistic, instead they come from the Gospels, whether people like it or not. He has always believed that the Gospels are a means of liberation for the poor and that the poor are ‘God’s chosen ones’. He has always defended this viewpoint during the difficult times in which he has almost always had to live, both within the Church and without. He has always paid a very high price for his stance in the form of complaints and even the recent death threats, due to his support for the indigenous members of his diocese.

*Jaume Botey Holds a degree in Theology and PhDs in Anthropology and Philosophy. Currently he is lecturing in the History of Culture and Social Movements at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.

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A Short Story from History Curated by Manuel Manonelles

The Dalmases Embassy and the Case of the Catalans (I)

Pau Ignasi de Dalmases i Ros (1670-1718), the Catalan nobleman who acted as Catalan ambassador to London from 1713 to 1714

On March 23rd 1713, Pau Ignasi de Dalmases i Ros left Barcelona headed for London. He did so in his capacity as ambassador of the authorities of Catalonia and of the city of Barcelona to the Court of Saint James. His mission was that of reclaiming the implementation of the agreements signed between the representatives of Catalonia and those of Queen Anne of England in 1705 in the city of Genoa. According to these agreements, Catalonia entered into the War of the Spanish Succession under the guarantee of the Crown of England that, regardless of the war’s outcame, Catalonia would retain its traditional Constitutional and Parliamentary system and the liberties linked to it.

We are currently celebrating the tercentenary of these events, and this temporary section is aimed at following the tortuous journey of this Catalan ambassador, as well as all his activities in the different Courts of Europe, but in particular in London.

Through this section, it will be possible not only to commemorate what took place three hundred years ago; but to know more about what in the different chancelleries of Europe, as well as in the published opinion of that time, became to be known as ‘The Case of the Catalans’.

The journey:

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23rd March 1713

Pau Ignasi de Dalmases (ambassador to London) and Felip de Ferran (ambassador to The Hague) leave Barcelona by boat heading to Genoa.

27th March 1713

Signature in Madrid of the preliminary peace treaty between the United Kingdom and Spain, including important compensations to Britain, along with the right to participate in the lucrative slave trade with the Spanish dominions in America.

9th April 1713

The Catalan ambassadors leave Genoa for Milan.

11th -12th April 1713

The treaties of peace known as the ‘Treaties of Utrecht’ are signed in this Dutch city. Contrary to the treaty of alliance signed in 1705 between the Crown of England and the Catalan representatives, the preservation of the Catalan Constitutional system is not included in the negotiations.

26th April 1713

The ambassadors reach Chur (Switzerland) and Lindau (Bayern) where they receive the unfortunate news of the signing of the Treaties of Utrecht.

Catalan International View

5th May 1713

Dalmases and Ferran reach the free city of Frankfurt where they coincide, and have long and substantive discussions with -among others- the Duke of Marlborough.

14th May 1713

Pau Ignasi de Dalmases and Felip de Ferran arrive in Utrecht, where they meet with the British envoy, Lord Bristol.

19th May 1713

Once it is confirmed that the treaties of peace are signed and sealed; Dalmases leaves The Netherlands, heading towards London. Ferran goes to The Hague.

25th May 1713

After fierce storms in the Channel, ambassador de Dalmases and part of his delegation finally reach London.

26th May 1713

Dalmases starts his activities in London, by meeting with the Imperial ambassador, Johan Philip von Hoffmann, followed by a frenetic series of meetings with Count Peterborough, the dukes of Buckingham and Argyle, Lord Finch and Lord Nottingham; reaching State Secretary Henry St. John, Viscount Bolingbroke, the most powerful member of the government at that time.

8th June 1713

In a meeting with General James Stanhope, Dalmases and Stanhope agree on the importance of bringing the case before Parliament.

15th June 1713

Dalmases continues his intense activities in order to be received by the Queen.

22nd June 1713

Following the provisions of the Utrecht Treaties and of the Convention for the Evacuation of Catalonia -also signed in Utrecht- a secret agreement is reached in Hospitalet (near Barcelona) for the withdrawal of the remaining Imperial troops from Catalonia.

28th June 1713

Due to the intercession of Lord Peterborough, Dalmases is received by Queen Anne, at Kensington Palace. However, Dalmases is received in private audience, not as a fully recognised ambassador. Nevertheless, he presents a memorial to the Queen.

John Churchill, 1st Duke of Marlborough (1650-1722) famous military commander and statesman, with whom ambassador Dalmases met and shared political strategies.

(To be continued)

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The Artist

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The Artist

‘Artwindows’, the magic of segmented perceptions There is nothing better than to observe, to react when faced with an external visual stimulus. It is at this point when our consciousness informs the notion of what we are observing. Why see everything as a whole, why not see the small things, why not blindly focus on the segmented, small details of what we are interested in?

This is the magic of perception! It will always be unique in each of us and the messages we will receive will be ours alone, an internal world where we can enjoy all these interpretations.

-You, trees, will manage to transport everything which you hide in a disinterested way, your surroundings, with the light, the shadows, the reflections... It is we who do not appreciate all that you offer us.

Natural homes, where we can be free from thought, can breathe the purity of our sentiments. Everything is a lot easier than it seems... http://www.tatianablanque.es

I come from a family with close ties to the worlds of fashion, photography and design. This gave rise to my first loves: painting and art.

My paternal grandmother was a photographer in Barcelona in the early twentieth century and my maternal grandfather went to the United States in order to bring prêt-à-porter to Catalonia. I suppose that all their experience and passion for creativity manifested itself in me as a need to create.

The search for my ‘reason for being’ is reflected in every collection I have created. My constant need to find a way out and my insistence on understanding how our environment can directly affect us and vice versa has been and remains my leitmotiv.

I want to find authenticity in our reality, whatever it may be. I like how and in what way people are reflected in mirrors and the manner in which their own shadow defines their reason for being. The way in which we duplicate and shut ourselves off on stages chosen, sometimes, by ourselves.

I need to collect small pieces of reality and lock them into geometrically perfect spaces in order to enjoy and control them.

It’s at this point when nature, which forms a direct part of my life, offers the opportunity to probe my thoughts. Its purity, its authentic nakedness, its capacity for harmony, its disordered order, its ‘deafening silence’, the sense of assembled solitude, its light, its shadows. All is played out on timeless white spaces where it is only explained what one wants to read.

Personal stages, authentic, translucent, silent, mine and yours.

I hope that a passion for my pursuit of creativity with all its content and concept can become a part of you all.

Tatiana Blanqué

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A Poem Curated by Enric Bou Chair in Hispanic Studies, Brown University (Providence)

The Silent Six gray bronzes at dawn. You were sleeping.

The humid sound of a bell awoke you perhaps While I, at the station, watching the people enter, Attempted to swallow With blows of indifference That bitter cold of an unspoken farewell.

The sky slowly brightened And was punctuated by birds. Only after When the train was reaching the second bridge And with the rhythmic pace made horizons grow around you, I saw my hands full of night And I imagined myself as a wave El silenciós Submissively returning to you.

Sis bronzes grisos d’alba. Tu dormies.

Un ressò humit de campana tal volta et despertava mentre jo, a l’estació, mirant entrar la gent, provava d’empassar-me a cops d’indiferència aquella amargor freda de comiat no dit.

El cel es desvetllava a poc a poc i el varen corcar ocells. Només després quan el tren ja arribava al segon pont i amb el ritme acompassat feia créixer horitzons al teu voltant, em vaig veure les mans plenes de nit i em vaig imaginar com una onada submisament tornant a tu.

Margalida Pons (Palma, Majorca, 1966) is a poet and literary critic. Her poetical works include Sis bronzes grisos d’alba (1985) (awarded the Salvador Espriu Prize) and Les aus (1988) (awarded the Ciutat de Palma de Poesia Prize 1987). She is the author of unmistakably shrewd poems, which pay special attention to language experimentation and poetic forms. Her voice perceives the loneliness in the day-to-day, and detects answers to ontological questions (time, love) in the colors and shapes of nature. Since 1996 she has taught Catalan Literature, Literary Theory, and Comparative Literature at the University of the Balearic Islands.

She has published a number of studies on 20th century poetry and experimental literature. Her publications include, Blai Bonet: maneres del color (1993), Els poetes insulars de postguerra (1998), Corrents de la poesia insular del segle XX (2010) and, as an editor or co-editor, (Des)aïllats: narrativa contemporània i insularitat a les Illes Balears (2004), Textualisme i subversió: formes i condicions de la narrativa experimental catalana 19701985 (2007), Poètiques de ruptura (2008), and Transformacions: literatura i canvi sociocultural dels anys setanta ençà (2010). She leads the research group LiCETC (http://www.uib.es/depart/dfc/litecont/), which focuses on literary experimentation and interdisciplinarity.

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Editorial Board Martí Anglada Former foreign news editor at TV3 (Catalonia television). He has been foreign correspondent in the Middle East, Italy and Great Britain (1977-1984) for the Barcelona newspaper La Vanguardia and United States correspondent for TV3 (1987-1990). He has also been an international political commentator. His latest book is Afers no tan estrangers (Not So Foreign Affairs) published by Editorial Mina (part of Grup 62).

Enric Canela (Barcelona, 1949). Holds a degree in Chemistry from the Universitat de Barcelona (UB) (1972) and a PhD in Chemistry, specialising in Biochemistry. He has taught at the UB since 1974, where he is currently Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and collaborates on research into intracellular communication. He also conducts research on theoretical Biochemistry. Regularly publishes in scientific journals of international repute. He is a member of numerous scientific societies. Between 1991 and 1995 he was vice president of the Catalan Society of Biology. Between 2007 and 2009 he was president of the Circle for Knowledge. Between 2007 and 2011 he was a patron of the National Agency for Evaluation, Certification and Accreditation (ANECA) in Spain. He is currently vice-rector of Science Policy at the UB.

Salvador Cardús (Terrassa, 1954). PhD in Economics at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB). Visiting researcher at the University of Cambridge, Cornell University (USA) and Queen Mary College of the University of London. Currently he is professor of Sociology at the UAB and the former Dean of the Faculty of Political Sciences and Sociology. He has conducted research into the sociology of religion and culture, media, nationalism and identity. His published works include, Plegar de viure (Living Together) with Joan Estruch, Saber el temps (Understanding the Time), El desconcert de l’educació (The Uncertainty of Education), Ben educats (Well Educated) and El camí de la independència (The Road To Independence).

In the field of journalism he was the editor of the Crònica d’Ensenyament magazine (1987-1988) and was deputy editor of the Avui newspaper (1989-1991). He contributes to ARA, La Vanguardia, Diari de Terrassa and Deia newspapers. He is member of the Institut d’Estudis Catalans.

August Gil-Matamala Has been a practising lawyer since 1960, specialising in the fields of criminal and labour law. He has taken part in numerous cases in defence of people on trial for their demands in favour of people’s rights, as well as hearings before the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Gil-Matamala fought the first successful case against the Spanish state for the violation of basic rights. He is a founder member of the Commission for the Defence of Individual Rights of the Col·legi d’Advocats de Barcelona (the Barcelona Bar Association) and the Catalan Association for the Defence of Human Rights, which he presided over from its foundation in 1985 to 2001.

Gil-Matamala has also been president of both the Fundació Catalunya and the European Democratic Lawyers organisation. In 2007, coinciding with his retirement, he received the Creu de Sant Jordi (St. George’s Cross, the highest honour awarded by the Catalan government).

Montserrat Guibernau Professor of Politics at Queen Mary College, University of London. Holds a PhD and an MA in Social and Political Theory from the University of Cambridge and a degree in Philosophy from the Universitat de Barcelona. She has taught at the universities of Warwick, Cambridge, Barcelona, the London School of Economics and the Open University. Guibernau has held visiting professorhips at the universities of Edinburgh, Tampere, Pompeu Fabra, the UQAM (Quebec) and the Austrian Academy of Sciences. Currently she holds a visiting fellowship at the Centre for the Study of Global Governance, London School of Economics. Montserrat Guibernau is the author of numerous books and articles on nationalism, the nation-state, national identity, and national and ethnic minorities in the West from the perspective of global governance.

Guillem López-Casasnovas (Minorca, 1955). Holds a degree in Economics (distinction, 1978) and Law (1979) from the Universitat de Barcelona (UB). He obtained his PhD in Public Economics from the University of York (UK, 1984). He has been a lecturer at the UB, visiting scholar at the Institute of Social and Economic Research (UK), University of Sussex and at the Graduate School of Business at the University of Stanford (USA). Since June 1992 has been full professor of economics at Barcelona’s Universitat Pompeu Fabra (UPF), where he has been vice-rector of Economics and International Relations and dean of the School of Economics and Business Science. In 1998 he created the Economics and Health Research Centre (CRES- UPF), which he directed until recently. Co-director of the Master’s in Public Management (UPF-UAB-EAPC). In 2000 he received the Catalan Economics Society Award and in 2001 the Joan Sardà Dexeus Award. He is also a member of the Minorcan Institute of Studies, The Catalan Royal Academy of Medicine and a distinguished member of the Economists’ Society of Catalonia. President of the International Health Economics Association and since 2005 one of the Spanish Central Bank’s six independent Council members.

Manuel Manonelles Political commentator specialising in international relations, human rights and democratisation processes. Currently director of the Foundation for a Culture of Peace, Barcelona. He has been special advisor to the Co-chair of the UN High Level Group for the Alliance of Civilizations, as well as advisor to the coordinator of the Secretariat of the World Forum of Civil Society Networks (Ubuntu Forum), which is a member of the International Council of the World Social Forum. He has been an international electoral observer and supervisor for the OSCE and the EU on many occasions, and has participated in several international intergovernmental and non-governmental processes.

Fèlix Martí Former president of the International Catholic Movement for Intellectual and Cultural Affairs (Pax Romana), from 1975 to 1984; director of Catalonia magazine (1987-2002), a publication printed in four different languages, aimed at disseminating Catalan culture; director of the UNESCO centre of Catalonia (1984 to 2002) and later its honorary president (from 2003). From 1994 to 2002 he was editor of the Catalan editions of the yearly reports of the Washington-based Worldwatch Institute, L’Estat del món (The State of the World) and Signes vitals (Vital Signs). He promotes the Declaration on Contributions by Religions to a Culture of Peace, signed by leaders of the great religious traditions in 1994. President of the Linguapax International Institute from 2001 to 2004 and honorary president thereafter. Wrote his memoirs Diplomàtic sense estat (Diplomat Without a State), published by Edicions Proa in 2006. Was awarded the UNESCO Human Rights Medal in 1995 and the Generalitat de Catalunya’s Creu de Sant Jordi (St. George’s Cross) in 2002.

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Eva Piquer (Barcelona, 1969).Writer and cultural journalist. Works for several newspapers and magazines. Has been a lecturer at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and a New York news correspondent. Won the 2002 Josep Pla prize for her novel Una victòria diferent (A Different Victory). Also author of several books, including La noia del temps (The Weather Girl), Alícia al país de la televisió (Alice in Television Land) and No sóc obsessiva, no sóc obsessiva, no sóc obsessiva (I’m Not Obsessive, I’m Not Obsessive, I’m Not Obsessive). Her latest book is called La feina o la vida (Life or work).

Ricard Planas (Girona, 1976). Journalist, art critic and cultural promoter. Studied Philology and the History of Art at the Universitat de Girona. In 1999 he founded the magazine Bonart, dedicated to the contemporary art scene in the Catalan Countries. More recently he created and directed the Catalan art fair INART in 2005 and 2006. Has worked as the curator for exhibitions by important artists such as Arranz-Bravo, Lamazares, Formiguera, Cuixart, Ansesa and Grau-Garriga. Ricard has collaborated with Ona Catalana, Catalunya Ràdio, iCatfm and Onda Rambla radio stations. Has also worked for the Diari de Girona, El Punt and El Mundo newspapers, among others.

Vicent Sanchis (Valencia, 1961). Holds a degree in Information Sciences from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. In his career as a journalist it is worth highlighting that he has worked and collaborated on many publications and with numerous publishers; he has been editor and director of El Temps magazine, director of Setze magazine, the Catalan supplement of Cambio 16, and director of the newspapers El Observador and Avui. He has also excelled as a scriptwriter and director on different TV programmes. At present he is president of the editorial board of Avui, and vicepresident of Òmnium Cultural. Vicent is also a lecturer in the Faculty of Communication Sciences at Universitat Ramon Llull in Barcelona.

Pere Torres Biologist and environmental consultant. After some time spent on research (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona), he joined the Government of Catalonia in 1991. He was in turn secretary of the Catalan Inter-university Council (1991-1993), Head of the Environment Minister’s staff (1993-1995), general director of Environmental Planning (1995-2000) and secretary for Regional Planning (2000-2003). Since 2004 he has done consultancy work in public management, sustainability and land use planning and has been a regular contributor to the International Institute for Governability and the Institut Cerdà.

Montserrat Vendrell (Barcelona, 1964) has been BIOCAT’s CEO since April 2007. BIOCAT is an organization that promotes biotechnology, biomedicine and medical technologies in Catalonia. It is supported by the government of Catalonia and the Barcelona city council and includes companies and research institutions. As a cluster organization, BIOCAT’s goals include promoting the development of biotechnology companies and research institutions through implementation of specific programs, facilitating access to financing and talent, and internationalization. Vendrell has been the Chairwoman of CEBR (the Council of European Bioregions) since 2012.

Dr. Vendrell holds a PhD in Biology (Universitat de Barcelona) and has more than ten years’ experience in biomedicine and biotechnology research in various international research institutions. She holds a Masters in science communication (UPF, 1997) and a Degree in business administration (IESE, PDG-2007).

Before BIOCAT she was linked to the Barcelona Science Park, where she held several posts such as Scientific Director (1997-2005) and Deputy Director General (2005-2007). Among other tasks, Dr. Vendrell led the design and implementation of the Park’s Strategic Plan, as well as the organization and management of scientific activities and technological platforms. She was a member of the Steering Committee of the Park’s Biotech Incubator, and in charge of international relations.

Carles Vilarrubí (Barcelona, 1954). Businessman. He is currently Executive Vice-President of Rothschild Spain Investment Bank, specialising in key mergers and takeovers in the financial sector on an international scale. President of CVC Grupo Consejero, an equity and investment advisory firm, with a portfolio of shares in consulting and service companies from the world of communications, the media, marketing, technology and telecommunications. President of Doxa Consulting Group, independent consultants on technology, media and telecommunications, leaders in the sector and with a presence in Spain and Portugal. He is a member of the advisory board of the Catalan confederation Foment del Treball Nacional (National Employment Promotion) and patron of the Fundació Orfeó Català - Palau de la Música. He has also been a member of the governing council of ADENA WWF (World Wild Fund for Nature), and sat on the boards of the Fundación Arte y Tecnología, Fundesco and Fundación Entorno. He is also member of the F.C Barcelona.

Vicenç Villatoro (Terrassa, 1957). Writer and journalist. Holds a degree in Information Sciences. Former president of the Ramon Trias Fargas Foundation.

As a journalist he has worked for numerous organisations. He was the editor of the Avui newspaper from 1993 to 1996 and head of the culture section of TV3. Between 2002 and 2004 was director general of the Catalan Radio and Television Corporation. He has contributed to a range of media companies, such as Avui, El Periódico, El País, El Temps, Catalunya Ràdio and COM ràdio. As a writer he has written a dozen novels. Currently he is the director of the Institut Ramon Llull.

Francesc de Dalmases (Director) (Barcelona, 1970). Journalist and consultant in humanitarian aid and cooperation and development. Has been president (1999-2006) of the Association of Periodicals in Catalan (APPEC); coordinator for the delegation to the Spanish state of European Bureau for Lesser-Used Languages (1995-1999); coordinator for the third conference of the CONSEU (Conference of European Stateless Nations) (1999); and coordinator for the publication Europa de les Nacions (1993-1999). Has acted as a foreign expert in aid projects in such diverse locations as Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mongolia, Kosovo, Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Mexico, Guatemala and Morocco.

He is a member of the Cooperation Council of the Catalan government. He recently (2011) joined Barcelona’s Council’s Aid Commitee and is a board member of the Federation of Internationally Recognized Catalan Organisations.

Víctor Terradellas (Editor) (Reus, 1962). Entrepreneur and political and cultural activist. President and founder of Fundació CATmón. Editor of Catalan International View and ONGC, a magazine dedicated to political thought, solidarity, aid and international relations. Víctor has always been involved in political and social activism, both nationally and internationally. The driving force behind the Plataforma per la Sobirania (The Platform for Self-Determination) as well as being responsible for significant Catalan aid operations and international relations in such diverse locations as Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Albania, Afghanistan, Mongolia, Pakistan and Kurdistan. Currently he is General Secretary of International Relations for the Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya party.

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