Catalonia Strife Could Take Economic Toll, Hurting Nationalist Cause

Posted: October 26th, 2017

By Jacob Funk Kirkegaard

Jacob Funk Kirkegaard is a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics. Before joining the Institute, he worked with the Danish Ministry of Defense, the United Nations in Iraq, and in the private financial sector. He is coeditor of Transatlantic Economic Challenges in an Era of Growing Multipolarity (2012), author of The Accelerating Decline in America's High-Skilled Workforce: Implications for Immigration Policy (2007), coauthor of US Pension Reform: Lessons from Other Countries (2009) and Transforming the European Economy (2004), and assisted with Accelerating the Globalization of America: The Role for Information Technology (2006). His current research focuses on European economies and reform, immigration, foreign direct investment trends and estimations, pension systems, demographics, offshoring, and the impact of information technology.

Over the weekend, Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy responded to the independence referendum, which the Catalonian government held on October 1, with an announcement that his government would invoke Article 155 to depose the current regional government and impose direct rule until new elections can be held in six months. The Spanish senate will vote on these measure this Friday, and today Catalan President Carles Puigdemont will give his response to Rajoy at a Catalonian parliamentary session. The Cipher Brief’s Fritz Lodge spoke with Jacob Kirkegaard, Senior Fellow at the Peterson Institute of International Economics, about Rajoy’s strategy to find a new government he can negotiate with in Catalonia.

The Cipher Brief: How has the Spanish government’s decision to invoke Article 155 of the Constitution and begin the process towards imposing direct rule accelerated the Catalan crisis and what comes next?

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