{"id":12846,"date":"2015-10-01T07:10:45","date_gmt":"2015-10-01T12:10:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=12846"},"modified":"2015-10-01T07:10:45","modified_gmt":"2015-10-01T12:10:45","slug":"spain-leaps-toward-political-breakdown","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=12846","title":{"rendered":"Spain Leaps Toward Political Breakdown"},"content":{"rendered":"<h3 class=\"entry-title\"><a href=\"http:\/\/wolfstreet.com\/2015\/09\/30\/spain-catalonia-closer-to-political-breakdown-independence-vote\/\" target=\"_blank\">Spain Leaps Toward Political Breakdown<\/a><\/h3>\n<p><strong>Desperately needed\u00a0international investors dread it<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The dust is not even close to settling after Catalonia\u2019s latest experimental flirtation with nation building. The pro-independence coalition fell tantalizingly short of gaining a majority of seats (62 out of 135). Now it needs the support of the anti-capitalist separatist party Popular Unity Candidacy (CUP) to secure a pro-independence majority in the regional parliament.<\/p>\n<p>The problem is that CUP, which advocates a Catalonian exit (Cat-exit) from the EU, the Eurozone, and NATO, as well as unilateral default on the region\u2019s debt, seems determined to play hard ball. After picking up 10 seats in the election \u2013 a seven-point increase on 2011\u2019s total \u2014 its lead candidate Antonio Ba\u00f1os has refused to endorse the reappointment of the region\u2019s pro-business president Artur Mas, who Ba\u00f1os described as \u201ctainted\u201d by corruption and the long shadow of austerity.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Kingmaker or Kingslayer?<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>In his role as Catalonia\u2019s new kingmaker-turned-kingslayer, Ba\u00f1os also dismissed the possibility of CUP supporting a unilateral declaration of independence from Spain. Before the elections CUP had pledged that it would only support a unilateral declaration of independence if the pro-independence parties received a majority of the vote. It won 47%.<\/p>\n<p>As for Mas, his post-electoral hangover has only just begun. Back in 2012, The Economist\u2019s Giles Tremlett\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/news\/21566402-catalonia-question-critical-mas\" target=\"_blank\">presciently warned<\/a>\u00a0that by nailing his colors to Catalonia\u2019s independence movement in a last-ditch effort to salvage his own political career, Mas had jumped on a tiger he could not fully control. Now the tiger, it seems, is in the process of unseating its rider. And the rider could soon find himself barred from public office altogether.<\/p>\n<p>As\u00a0<em>El Pa\u00eds<\/em>\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/elpais.com\/elpais\/2015\/09\/29\/inenglish\/1443522300_204984.html\" target=\"_blank\">reports<\/a>, the Catalan premier and two other political officials from his party are an official target in a probe (or in the vernacular of Catalonia\u2019s pro-independence supporters, \u201cpolitical trial\u201d) opened by prosecutors over last year\u2019s symbolic referendum:<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&#8230;click on the above link to read the rest of the article&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Spain Leaps Toward Political Breakdown Desperately needed\u00a0international investors dread it The dust is not even close to settling after Catalonia\u2019s latest experimental flirtation with nation building. The pro-independence coalition fell tantalizingly short of gaining a majority of seats (62 out of 135). Now it needs the support of the anti-capitalist separatist party Popular Unity Candidacy [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[8851,117,9445,195,200,5660,279,285,553,9446,743,4255],"class_list":["post-12846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","category-liberty","tag-catalan-independence","tag-catalonia","tag-cup","tag-debt","tag-default","tag-don-quijones","tag-eu","tag-eurozone","tag-nato","tag-popular-unity-candidacy","tag-spain","tag-wolfstreet"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12846"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12847,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12846\/revisions\/12847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}