wall street journal

The Spanish Prime Minister, Mariano Rajoy, stated on Wednesday that he "will not join absurd debates" and will not "participate in the game" to negotiate Catalonia's self-determination vote since "the referendum is illegal and will not take place". Ironically, Rajoy accepted the request of the President of the Catalan Government, Artur Mas, to meet, but he has specifically rejected to talk about the purpose of the interview: the self-determination vote. In addition, the Spanish PM has downplayed the agreement backed by a two-third majority of the Catalan Parliament, which was answering a mandate resulting from the 2012 Catalan elections. On the same day the Spanish Finance Minister, Cristóbal Montoro, rejected "reinventing Spain" to better fit Catalans and therefore ruled out a deep Constitutional Reform. In addition, he also rejected setting up a new fiscal scheme for Catalonia, similar to the one that the Basque Country already has.

Next to the Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy (who went to the White House), the President of the United States, Barack Obama, did not talk about Catalonia despite being asked about it directly by a journalist. Obama did not repeat the formula expressed by other international leaders – it is Spain’s internal matter – but instead preferred to avoid the issue. He did not explicitly back the Spanish PM, despite the fact that Rajoy had stated, only a few minutes earlier, that “Catalonia’s independence will not happen”. Rajoy’s meeting with Obama and the following press conference at the White House were also controversial because the Spanish Government banned several media that were covering the trip and only allowed one Catalan newspaper to attend it.

The readers of the Wall Street Journal have deemed best photograph of the year a picture of the ‘Catalan Way towards independence’, a 400-kilometre-long human chain which crossed the whole of Catalonia on the 11^th of September 2013. 1.6 million Catalans took part in the demonstration, asking for independence from Spain. The winning photograph was taken by Raymond Roig and portrays participants on the heights of Pertús village (located near the French border, in the Pyrenees). It was chosen amongst the 364 pictures selected by ‘Wall Street Journal’ editors as the best photos of the year.

Characterised as one of the most powerful men in combating the Spanish financial crisis, Catalan President Artur Mas presents his forceful economic strategy to the US newspaper