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Iran releases Spaniard held for more than a year

Iran's embassy in Spain said Sunday that it had released the last Spanish national detained in the country, a tourist who was arrested shortly after he entered the country in October 2022.

Published: 1 January 2024 11:28 CET
Santiago Sanchez Cogedor
Protestors hold portrait of Santiago Sanchez Cogedor, during a rally asking for his freedom, near the Iranian embassy in Madrid, on December 18th, 2022, as he was pulled in jail by Iranian authorities since October 2022. Photo by: THOMAS COEX / AFP

Santiago Sanchez Cogedor was held as protests were roiling Iran after the death in custody of the young Iranian Mahsa Amini, arrested for allegedly violating laws requiring women to cover their heads.

She fell into a coma after what her family said was mistreatment and died in hospital, sparking the unrest.

“The embassy of the Islamic Republic of Iran is pleased to announce the release of Santiago Sanchez Cogedor, the only Spanish citizen detained in Iran,” the Iranian embassy in Spain posted on social media.

“His release comes amid friendly and historic relations between the two countries and in accordance with the law,” the embassy added.

The royal house of King Felipe VI celebrated Sanchez Cogedor’s “return to Spain for the New Year” in a post on social media.

Sanchez Cogedor had entered Iran months after the football fan embarked in January 2022 on a long trip by foot toward Qatar to attend the World Cup in November-December.

His family lost all trace of him some weeks before the tournament started.

His last message documenting his adventures on Instagram appeared on October 1, when he wrote that he was in a village in northern Iraq and headed for the Iranian border.

A voicemail to his parents later broadcast by a television station said he was in Tehran headed for the port of Bandar Abbas, in the Strait of Hormuz, from where he intended to take a boat for Qatar.

Some days later his parents learned via the Spanish foreign ministry of his arrest, his mother Celia Cogedor told AFP in late October.

Iran is known to be holding more than 10 Western nationals, and governments and NGOs accuse Tehran of using them as bargaining chips for its own nationals.

Amini’s death became the symbol of a protest movement against enforced wearing of the hijab, and the ensuing repression of protests saw hundreds of deaths and thousands of arrests.

Tehran has accused the United States of fomenting the protests and had announced in September 2022 the arrest of nine foreign nationals from several European states including France, Italy and Poland on the alleged grounds they were linked to the protests.

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POLITICS

The plan for Catalonia to handle its own finances separately from Spain

Catalan separatists are pushing for 'financiación singular' to gain greater fiscal autonomy from the Spanish state, but the proposals are tied up with politics at the national level.

Published: 24 June 2024 14:06 CEST
The plan for Catalonia to handle its own finances separately from Spain

The recent regional elections in Catalonia in May were hailed by political pundits as the end of the procés and turning the page on the Catalan question. The evidence for this was that separatist parties lost their majority in the regional legislature for the first time in over a decade and that the Socialists (PSOE) won the most votes overall.

However, since then things have been far from simple. The PSOE candidate, Salvador Illa, is yet to secure an investiture vote and the political horse trading is ongoing with ramifications for Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s fragile majority at the national level.

The controversial amnesty law pushed by Sánchez’s government then got clogged up in the courts, despite being approved in the Congress, and Catalan separatist parties managed to cling onto the role of speaker in the regional parliament. Catalan lawmakers elected Josep Rull, a member of the hardline separatist Junts per Catalunya, which is led by exiled former Catalan President Carles Puigdemont.

READ ALSO: Separatists retain speaker in new Catalan parliament

The important context to understand here is that the Sánchez government is dependent on separatist parties, including Junts and the more moderate Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC). After inconclusive general election results last summer, Sánchez essentially made a deal with the Catalans in exchange for their votes to maintain his position in La Moncloa.

Catalan finances and national politics

Now separatist parties, particularly ERC, are leveraging this support in order to gain concessions from the national government. The main way they’re doing this is through a demand for financiación singular — ‘singular financing’. That is to say, how Catalonia raises and uses taxes, and whether or not it should be allowed greater fiscal autonomy closer to something like the Basque model.

ERC secretary general Marta Rovira has said in the Spanish press that greater fiscal autonomy “is the minimum that can be demanded,” and alluded to the conditionality of their support for Sánchez: “The Socialists must know that if Pedro Sánchez is not able to move on the singular financing… it will be very difficult for ERC to support him. Salvador Illa must bear this in mind.”

la financiación ‘singular’

But what is singular financing? Former president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, described the plan as “full fiscal sovereignty” in the election campaign, and essentially what the ERC is proposing is a bespoke fiscal arrangement for Catalonia that allows the Generalitat to collect (and keep) more of its taxes.

This would be a step, albeit financial rather than constitutional, towards greater regional autonomy for Catalonia and likely viewed as a political victory for separatists.

For critics of Sánchez, it would be more evidence of his capitulation to Catalans.

Singular finance is an idea inspired by the so-called “Basque quota”. This is basically a fiscal arrangement that allows the Basque government control of most of its taxes but means it must also contribute a set ‘quota’ to the Spanish government.

READ ALSO: Spain’s contested Catalan amnesty bill comes into force

In Catalonia, the long-term aim would be something similar: for the Generalitat to collect all (or more than it currently does, at least) of the taxes paid in Catalonia and then transfer to the Spanish state an agreed portion of that.

In terms of cash, this would mean that the Generalitat would collect billions more in tax (some estimates put it as high as €52 billion overall) and more than double the €25.6 billion it received in 2021 under the current model.

Proponents of the singular finance model also suggest that giving the Generalitat greater fiscal autonomy would do something to redress the so-called ‘Catalan deficit’, the difference between what the Catalan economy contributes to the Spanish state coffers and what it receives in return investment. Generalitat estimates for 2021 put this figure at over €20 billion in 2021.

Therefore, the demand is not only political but economic. The ERC claims that changing the fiscal model would do something to resolve what it calls the “chronic underfunding” of the region.

Negotiations for a singular financing model, which will be tied up in the investiture negotiations for Illa, which are themselves tied up in the fragile arrangement at the national level, will likely continue for many weeks.

If no candidate has won an investiture vote in the regional parliament by August 25th, further elections will be called.

READ ALSO: Which Catalans want independence from Spain?

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