The attorney general’s announcement on January 20 that plans by the Catalan town of Vic to stop registering undocumented immigrants on its census were unlawful appeared to bring the furore surrounding the case to a close. After an outcry on the part of immigrant and human rights groups, Joaquin de Fuentes Bardají insisted that any immigrant should be able to register in their local municipality with just a passport (a visa or other documents being unnecessary) and therefore gain access to health and education services. But while Vic now appears unlikely to push ahead with its controversial initiative, this town of less than 40,000, just under a quarter of whom are migrants, has managed … [Read more...] about Catalonia, immigration and populism
Archives for February 2010
Running on Ẽmpty
A year after Spain’s centre-left government officially launched a massive stimulus package known as the Plan Ẽ, workers are still losing their jobs, public debt levels are scaring markets, and the economy is not likely to emerge from recession until 2011 at the earliest. Plan Ẽ, with its billions for public works projects, tax breaks and subsidies, was never intended to be more than a temporary bandage to get Spain through the worst of the fallout from the international financial crisis and the collapse of the domestic real estate and construction sector. But the wounds inflicted on Spain’s once booming economy have turned out to be slow to heal, and tearing the plaster off - as, for … [Read more...] about Running on Ẽmpty