The Economy of Catalonia

speak of the coefficient of central government spending in Catalonia
(while others might propose GDP or taxes).
Secondly there is the Social Security system. On the one hand the distribution
of the steadily shrinking reserve fund would have to be discussed
but this raises a number of difficulties that are not easy to solve. The most
important would undoubtedly be deciding which State takes responsibility
for payments to present-day pensioners. A particularly sensitive
point would be that of pensioners now living elsewhere in Spain but
who spent their working lives in Catalonia, and vice versa.
The third major issue would be the distribution of State assets, both
physical (facilities and infrastructures of all kinds) and financial (in various
forms, including concession rights). Again, the key problems are defining
their scope and the criteria for allocating Catalonia’s share (which
seem unlikely to be different from those used for the debt).
6) A friendly or unfriendly process?
When it comes to assessing the financial and economic effects of independence,
the way independence is attained is of vital importance. To
be sure, a secession process is never easy. It is never a chivalrous tournament.
The central government will refuse, usually until it has no
choice left, to even contemplate breaking up its territory. And territories
that want to hold a referendum on self-determination usually take
a long time to achieve it and must overcome numerous hurdles along
the way.
But the effects obviously differ widely depending on whether independence
is the result of an agreement between the two parties and its terms
are negotiated in a friendly, or at least civilised, way (as is happening in
the case of Scotland and the United Kingdom and happened, albeit to a
lesser extent, in Quebec and Canada), or whether the secession is traumatic.
«Traumatic» does not necessarily mean violent, but rather without
dialogue, from highly polarised positions, with one side stubbornly refusing
to sit down at the table and the other threatening to make unilateral
declarations.
This is the current situation in the conflict between Catalonia and Spain:
not only has there been no hint of dialogue of any kind, but the positions
48 Economia de Catalunya