The Economy of Catalonia

Xavier Escura, for his part, has written about this subject in this book and
summarises the situation in this way:
«It is very hard to valuate and quantify the colossal theft and looting which the
Catalans have suffered since the military occupation of Catalonia in 1714, that
is to say, from the time of the Decree of the New Plan, which deployed the
provisions on the ‘right of conquest’ of the new Bourbon military regime, to
the later prohibitions and confiscations of all kinds based on the laws imposed
by the Primo de Rivera dictatorship (1923-1930) and which increased notoriously
under the Franco regime (1939-75) and have been maintained in a more
nuanced and irregular way to the present day. To this should be added the ‘fiscal
looting’, the systematic economic suffocation and the lack of Spanish State
investment in the Catalan territory, as well as the Spanish State’s political-legal
measures preventing any moderating or corrective change in discriminatory
rules that are based, in short, on an initial ‘right of conquest’.
«This valuation and quantification –without counting the ‘fiscal looting’
and macroeconomic depredation which are confirmed by data available
to all– are difficult to make because, beyond the evident moral and intangible
losses and damages that have so greatly encumbered the normal
natural development of Catalonia’s culture, economy and life, there are
immense direct and indirect material losses and damages derived from
this long repression: the requisitioning of infrastructures; the destruction
of markets and jobs; the ruin of a tremendous number of people, entities
and institutions, and much more.»
Grievances affecting the Catalan economy (the Spanish State’s
subsidy policy)
Albert Pont is of the opinion that «the distribution of the property of the
Spanish State should also consider other matters such as the unequal distribution
of public aid to certain economic sectors, including industry
beyond the fiscal and macroeconomic spheres with which we have been dealing, Xavier
Escura recommends two essential books:
1- Benet, Josep: Catalunya sota el règim franquista. Informe sobre la persecució de la llengua i la
cultura catalanes pel règim del general Franco (Catalonia under the Francoist Regime. Report
on the Persecution of the Catalan Language and Culture by the Regime of General
Franco) Edicions Catalanes de París, 1973; and 2- Ferrer i Gironès, Francesc: La
persecució política de la llengua catalana (The Political Persecution of the Catalan Language).
Ed. 62. Barcelona, 1985.
164 The Economy of Catalonia