That Catalonia is entering a new political scenario and leaving behind the dense years it has lived through is already evident. Regenerationism is imposed. If you listen carefully to the leaders of the two most rising parties in this electoral campaign, Carles Puigdemont and Salvador Illa, both are emphasizing, from very different perspectives and formulas, the same ideas: regenerate, remake and refound.
On Catalonia’s list of pending tasks regarding the past is the return of the companies that fled in 2017 fearing the consequences of the unilateral declaration of independence.
There are various estimates on how many crossed the Ebro River, some exceed 5,000, others lower it to 4,000. The truth is that first the banks, then many listed companies and finally a few thousand firms moved their headquarters, although not their activity, outside of Catalonia. And few have returned.
Salvador Illa, the PSC candidate, detailed his proposal last night during the TV3 debate, to encourage the return of these companies. Illa is against the sanctions proposed by Junts to those companies that separate their registered domicile from their decision-making center.
The party led by Carles Puigdemont recently presented an amendment in Congress to avoid this double location, which, it believes, should be subject to a fine. The proposal of the independentists has its reason: in 2017, faced with the pressure of some companies to leave Catalonia before the eventual declaration of independence, Minister Luis de Guindos, at the request of some Catalan businessmen, introduced a reform to that the decision to leave could be adopted as quickly as possible, without the need to meet the shareholders’ meeting.
Now Junts wants to give back to the partners the power to promote the return in the conviction that some Catalan shareholders of companies that left then will promote the return now. The threat of fines would be an added argument and tax incentives for returnees – another of Junts’ proposals – would be the incentive for their plan.
Illa does not share this position. It rejects sanctions as a means of pressure and considers that institutional and political stability is the first condition for the return of these companies. Added to this is the updating of infrastructure and especially the debureaucratization of public administration and the attraction of investments and talent. The socialist candidate has not defended a tax reduction as a stimulus to return.
Who, on the contrary, in generic terms, does defend this option is the Popular Party. Its candidate, Alejandro Fernández, maintained at a Barcelona Tribuna lunch held yesterday that the dismantling of what he describes as the Catalan “fiscal hell” is at the basis of the eventual return of companies along with the legal certainty that, in his opinion, , today is still not guaranteed in Catalonia.
Fernández, however, is not referring only to the companies that left. He believes that if both conditions were met, Catalonia would be in a position to regain its attractiveness for many companies.
Much more severe was his leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who made the presentations of his candidate yesterday. “Catalonia has lost leadership,” said the PP leader, “it has lost 9,000 companies, it has lost foreign investment. In 2016 it had 30% of foreign investment in Spain, now 16%. All this with a fiscal asphyxiation. “Catalans are the ones who pay the most taxes.” A devastating diagnosis that fits with the vision that today seems to overwhelm the PP leaders, that of a Catalonia in severe decline.
Esquerra, for its part, has said little or nothing about the return of companies in the campaign and in its program it does not mention a strategy for the return. When Junts proposed providing fiscal incentives for the return of companies that left, Republicans considered that this measure was going to be an affront to the firms that remained here despite the difficult circumstances of the moment.
Last Monday it was the Catalan employers’ association, Foment, who requested measures for the return of companies. Its president, Josep Sánchez Llibre, assured that “apart from the fact that they will return when there is political stability, it will be essential to have modern infrastructure, such as the expanded El Prat airport, and competitive taxation.” The return, Sánchez Libre assured, will come “without the need for subsidies or penalties.”
