As an indication of which way the wind is blowing in Pedro Sánchez's government on how much control the autonomous communities will have once Spain's state of alarm is raised, the draft of the royal decree being considered by deputy PM Carmen Calvo, health minister Salvador Illa and transport head José Luis Ábalos lays down that during "the new normality" the Spanish state will maintain a certain control over the autonomies and many restrictions. Let's be honest, thinking back to the LOAPA [the 1982 Spanish law that put limits on the autonomous communities not long after they had first been created], this will be a kind of new version, a loapilla. There is no consensus, apparently, in Sánchez's executive, which has gone this way and that with the text, due to the discomfort of some Podemos ministers. Meanwhile, the state solicitors are looking for the right wording so that the effect can be achieved without the treatment being noticed.
In short, there will be a transfer in powers, but the regulations will in general continue to emanate mostly from Madrid. The Spanish government is thus putting the autonomies into a judo lock, since the "new normality" is not in reality a return to the situation before the Covid-19 pandemic. Using the excuse of a hypothetical resurgence of the virus in autumn, the single central command which has existed until now will formally lapse, although in practice many of the decisions of the coming months, not to mention all of the important ones, will continue to come out of the Moncloa palace in Madrid. Once again, ignoring the comprehensive and total management of health by Catalonia over the last decades and its exclusive competence in the fields of tourism and transport, as specified in Catalonia's Statute of Autonomy.
This is not the only measure that will end up affecting Catalonia negatively this week - depending on how it ends up being resolved. The decree affects power, and alters the conception of Spain's autonomous state itself and the voraciousness of a central government which, taking advantage of any excuse, seems determined to shake off, gradually and stealthily, many of that state's own precepts. The other issue is related to the distribution of the 16 billion euros of extraordinary, non-reimbursable funds for the autonomous communities to alleviate the effects of the coronavirus.
Beyond the fact that the fund is completely insufficient - president Torra has asked for 15 billion euros for Catalonia alone, with 5 billion of that as a direct transfer from the state - the decision to apply compensatory criteria is inadmissible, as is usually the case with the negotiations of autonomous community funding. If the fund is motivated by the effects of coronavirus on the communities this should be the criterion, and the numbers are very easy to calculate. If the real intention is something else, we will again witness the market of partisan interests. And one can already start to intuit how it will end.