A case of much ado about nothing

The Span­ish gov­ern­ment held its cab­i­net meet­ing in Barcelona as a sign of “af­fec­tion and love” to­wards the city, said spokes­woman Is­abel Celaá after the meet­ing. But mak­ing the meet­ing pos­si­ble re­quired po­lice shut­ting down the area around the Llotja de Mar where it was held, to stop pro­test­ers reach­ing it. Prime min­is­ter Pedro Sánchez’s af­fec­tion ex­tended to com­mit­ting to meet­ing with pres­i­dent Quim Torra in Jan­u­ary, while mak­ing ges­tures to­wards for­mer pres­i­dents Josep Tar­radel­las and Lluís Com­pa­nys. In the end, it was a case of much ado about noth­ing.

The day began early with Barcelona’s Born neigh­bour­hood cut off for the meet­ing and strangely silent, a si­lence that was only bro­ken by the sounds of protest that grew dur­ing the day. The protests went on until early af­ter­noon, and in­cluded clashes with po­lice, lead­ing to a dozen ar­rests and 77 peo­ple wounded.

While peo­ple protested in the streets, in­side the Span­ish min­is­ters ap­proved two key mea­sures: rais­ing the min­i­mum wage by 22% to 900 euros and a 2.25% rise in the salaries of two mil­lion pub­lic work­ers.

Yet, these mea­sures had al­ready been an­nounced, and it was the other ini­tia­tives that caused sur­prise and dis­ap­proval from the pub­lic and Cata­lan gov­ern­ment alike. The cab­i­net ap­proved chang­ing the name of Barcelona air­port from El Prat to Josep Tar­radel­las, the first Cata­lan pres­i­dent after democ­racy re­turned to Spain, and con­demned the sen­tence by the Franco regime that led to the ex­e­cu­tion of pres­i­dent Lluís Com­pa­nys after the Civil War.

How­ever, the Cata­lan gov­ern­ment was not im­pressed, and spokes­woman, Elsa Ar­tadi, later ac­cused the mea­sures of being “aes­thetic” and “minor”. The only pos­i­tive point taken from the whole af­fair was a com­mit­ment by both gov­ern­ments to keep on talk­ing.