connection

Since December, firms are forbidden from contacting employees outside working hours, but applying the law is proving to be challenging for employers and unions

Catalan Minister Josep Rull calls for "excellent rail infrastructure" to boost the productivity of the Mediterranean ports

Barcelona’s El Prat airport will be connected with two US and two South American cities starting in June 2017 thanks to LEVEL, the new low-cost carrier of International Airlines Group (IAG). The company chose the Catalan capital to introduce its new brand because of its “international touristic appeal” and also because of the connections from Barcelona’s El Prat airport through Vueling, IAG’s CEO Willie Walsh explained. The new carrier will fly from Barcelona to San Francisco and Los Angeles starting at 99 euros and to Buenos Aires, Argentina and Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic starting at 149 euros. The flights will use A330-200 planes with crew from Iberia and IAG. More than 250 jobs are expected to be created in Barcelona, according to Walsh who presented the news this Friday morning at a press conference in Catalonia’s capital city of Barcelona.

Barcelona and Seoul will be connected through three direct flights per week from the 28th of April 2017. The Catalan Minister for Business and Knowledge, Jordi Baiget, announced this Wednesday that next year Korean Air, the largest airline in South Korea, will operate three flights - on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday - with capacity for 248 passengers each. The company currently operates flights to 129 destinations in 46 countries and in 2015 registered around 25 million passengers. Baiget detailed that the negotiation process to achieve an agreement started two years ago, on a trade mission and institutional trip of the Catalan Government to South Korea, and explained that the airline will extend the frequency to four days in the future “if things work well”.  

Governing cross-party list ‘Junts Pel Sí’ and radical left CUP, the two pro-independence forces in the Parliament, put in place this Friday the basis for the future Catalan Tax Agency. It will be constituted by three bodies: the Catalan Tax Agency, the Board of Taxes and the Fiscal Council. The latter is one of the main novelties of the document registered by the pro-independence groups. The Fiscal Council, a body which doesn’t exist within the Spanish framework, will include representatives from both the public and private sector and will be responsible for advising the Government. The proposal will have to be put to vote after this summer as one of the three ‘laws of disconnection’ from Spain that both groups plan to approve, according to the pro-independence roadmap.

The first of three laws which will enable Catalonia to start the disconnection process from Spain has been registered this Tuesday. Pro-independence cross-party list ‘Junts Pel Sí’ and radical left CUP, which represent a majority of 72 pro-independence seats in the Catalan Parliament, registered the law for the creation of the Catalan Agency for Social Protection. Although the law represents a new structure, it is set to manage the current competences that the Catalan executive already has on this matter. Therefore, both parties admitted that the law is still “autonomic”. However, according to ‘Junts Pel Sí’ MP Chakir el Homrani “the Agency is necessary to manage the social security scheme, as happens in every country”.

After more than 10 years of negotiations between the Catalan government and the Spanish Ministry for Transport and many changes on the route, the railway connection to Barcelona’s port will be a reality in two years’ time. The final project will cost €104 million and will be 50% funded by Port de Barcelona and the Spanish Ministry for Transport. The railway connection to Barcelona’s Port has been long-awaited by the Catalan government, as 13% of the containers and 30% of the cars that pass through the port are transported by train. The acceleration of this connection emphasises the need to start the construction of the Mediterranean corridor, one of the government’s main goals in terms of infrastructure, which is set to transport freight and passengers non-stop from Gibraltar to Central Europe.

The committee designed to study the constitutive process which has to put in place the basis of a future Catalan Republic has set to work. This Monday, pro-independence cross party ‘Junts Pel Sí’ MP Lluís Llach took responsibility at the head of the committee, after his predecessor, Muriel Casals, died from a head injury after suffering an accident in the beginning of February. The pro-independence parties in the Parliament considered it “indispensable” to set up a debate on the future Catalan constitution. “It will never be prohibited”, stated alternative left coalition ‘Catalunya Sí que es Pot’ MP Joan Coscubiela. The committee starts its work amid warnings from the Spanish executive, which ultimately took this committee before the Spanish Constitutional Court (TC) to evaluate its legality and potential future suspension.

The Parliament’s Bureau accepted this Tuesday the application handed over by the two main pro-independence forces in the Parliament, cross-party list ‘Junts Pel Sí’ and radical left CUP, which requests the creation of three laws: one on social measures, a second on the Catalan tax office and a third on the legal transition. Representatives from the Parliament’s Bureau assured that starting the processing of the three laws complies with the “formal requirements” established by the Catalan Chamber, although the Parliament’s legal services advised them against doing so. Anti-Catalan nationalism ‘Ciutadans’, the Catalan Socialist Party (PSC) and the Catalan People’s Party (PPC) have urged the Bureau to reconsider the creation of the framework for the three disconnection laws to be launched, as they consider them not to be a project of consensus.

The current Spanish Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, announced that the processing of the three laws which would prepare Catalonia for its disconnection process from Spain may be taken before the court. According to Rajoy, Spain’s legal services will analyse these laws and if evidence that they “could contradict what it is said in the Constitution” is found “the Spanish government will act as is has done up to now”. “The government is temporary, but the State, the Constitution and the laws are still in force” he warned. Rajoy also announced that the executive will approve this Friday a conflict of jurisdiction to be presented to the Spanish Constitutional Court regarding the creation of the new Catalan Ministry for Foreign Affairs. 

Last week the Spanish Government announced the delay or cancellation of several transport infrastructures? public works in Catalonia. One of them was the train connection to the main terminal of Barcelona?s airport, which now centralises almost all flight