The Catalonia of the ten million: plan it already or flip its again | News from Catalonia | EUROtoday

The Government assumes that Catalonia will attain, sooner moderately than later, the ten million inhabitants. And he needs to start out getting ready in order that public providers and infrastructure are on the peak of that demographic leap. The omen, which has expressed recurringly – though thus far with out an excessive amount of concretion – the Minister of Territory, Sílvia Paneque, has been acquired with an open rejection by the few who’ve publicly shred it. And particularly for the acute proper. The arguments in opposition to the “denaturation” of the nation “growth, whether or not so pronounced, will be given by immigration – juxtaposed, or rather camouflaged, under the pretext of sustainability. Catalonia, they come to say, it doesn’t give so much. “If you have no idea the best way to see the restrictions of sources and territory, get away,” said the leader of Aliança Catalan, Sílvia Orriols.

The projection of the Government is part of the finding of a lack: with the design In force, it is not enough to meet the needs of the population, with serious difficulties in accessing housing or moving in public transport without shocks. “We are a rustic designed for six million individuals who now have 8 and can quickly have 10,” said the counselor. Those six million In 1987, in the famous Campaign of the Generalitat of Jordi Pujol were greeted. The population was thus practically stagnant, to the first stages of the century, with the arrival of extra -community migrants. Almost no one repaired in the seven million, perhaps by a love for even, round, definitive numbers. In November 2023, and almost by surprise, it was announced, without the euphoria and optimism of yesteryear, which had overcome another threshold: 8 million Catalans. Paneque already thinks about 10.

The first, however, is to test the premise: is it true that “quickly” will we be ten million? The IDESCAT does not say it, or not so clearly. In its last population projection, of 2024, the Official Statistics Agency of the Generalitat manages three scenarios (bass, medium and high). Only in the latter, which marks one of the extremes (so it is less likely to occur, according to experts) points to those 10 million, a figure that, hypothetically, would be reached in the year 2052. “To get there, the migratory growth must be even more intense and stay in time. And the historical experience tells us that the arrivals are by waves, from economic cycles, and depending on the circumstances of the countries of origin” Juan Antonio Moddenes explains, researcher at the Center for Demographic Studies (CED) who, however, applauds that he thinks big. “In phrases of planning, it’s good to bear in mind most progress. It is healthier to suppose greater than much less.”

That idea ―Sonsize the future so that they are not seen, as now, the seams of the system – underlies the projections of the Government, which tries to identify the needs of each area: health and education, housing, natural resources (water), territorial balance and environment, infrastructure, transport, and a long etc. The key tool, they point out, will be the General Territorial Plan of Catalonia, which was approved in 1995 thinking about six million and has been outdated. Touches “to lift the bases of a brand new plan that doesn’t stay slender earlier than beginning,” explains to this newspaper Jordi Terrades, general secretary of the Department of Territory, Housing and Ecological Transition.

“Some infrastructure that have been then thought have ended now. But the nation is totally different, it has grown, and can be remodeled at even sooner velocity as a result of the world has accelerated,” says Terrades, critical of which the defense of the decrease is used as a disguise to reject immigration. “To be sustainable, we’d like folks within the labor market, wherever they arrive from. It makes me humorous that the correct doesn’t query when folks come from exterior with the portfolio properly full, solely after they come to work.”

“A rustic with out kids should have migrants”

Of the labor market in Catalonia (and the specific weight of immigration) knows a time Mariña Couceiro, sociologist of the Cipriano García Foundation. She is the author of a detailed CC OO report with clear conclusions: the revitalization of the labor market in recent years is due to migrants, which already represent 26% of those employed. Foreigners occupy the most precarious works, charge the worst salaries and suffer more the submerged economy: some 160,000 work even though they are in an irregular administrative situation, according to the study. “In Catalonia, immigration has been the engine of inhabitants progress and we can’t separate it from financial progress. The financial and social stability is optimistic,” he says.

Couceiro admits that there are “challenges” in the face of any population growth, but comes to say that there is much more to win. “We must converse to folks concerning the penalties of a demographic lower. A rustic that has no kids should have immigrants,” says the sociologist, who contributes a new fact, of 2024, which did not appear in the study: “100% of the online enhance of the lively inhabitants in Catalonia has been because of folks born overseas. Without them you can not perceive a way forward for financial and social prosperity,” says Couceir Ironiza with the fact that the extreme right is now interested in the decrease. “It is xenophobia wearing concern for sustainability. If they’re frightened about that difficulty, there are various measures that would already be taken.”

Who does worry in a genuine way is Jaume Grau, spokesman for Ecologists in Action, who names reflections such as Orriols: “Ecofascism.” “That sources are restricted and a progress fee can’t be held like the present one is proof. Given that, eco -fascism says: ” We are going to defend the privileges of a minority. ‘Social justice replicates that there’s a wealth of leftovers in order that we dwell with dignity.” Grau points out that an “inhabitants enhance of 25%” (from eight to ten million) “raises many challenges”, for example, in feeding or water consumption. But above all, in housing. “If it’s now one of many least actual rights, I have no idea the place we might see one another. Although we imagine that migrating is a proper, housing could make them materially unimaginable emigrate.”

To talk about housing you have to return to Mdenes, the CED researcher, because it is his object of study. “The inhabitants grows at the next velocity than the housing inventory grows. And it is a problem not for 10 million, however for now.” On the high stage of Idescat, he says, “we must construct 600,000 new properties in 30 years”, which means about 20,000 homes per year. Beyond the rejection that can raise growth and how that is compatible or not with a “environmentally sustainable” Catalonia, Mdenes says that it would be a “comparatively acceptable” challenge.

According to the latest Idescat data, in Catalonia about 14,000 homes are finished every year, but there is an “necessary decalage” with the needs of the population: “During the bubble of the start of the century, there was some coherence between what was constructed and the expansion of households, there was some demographic justification. But now the inner demand has disappeared.” Mdenes points out that “it’s affordable to suppose” that Catalonia remains the engine of population growth and that is why it is important “suppose not when it comes to what number of we at the moment are, however what number of we can be sooner or later.” As the historian Anna Cabré has pointed out in her work The migratory waves in the Catalan reproduction systemgrowth has not been flat and placid, but “moderately spasmodic, in massive waves.”

A “miracle” for transportation

The Catalans of the future, how many are, will continue to need to move. And public transport now leaves much to be desired. “The transport community isn’t for 8 million inhabitants, it has deficiencies of every kind, particularly in Rodalies, however not solely. If the inhabitants reached 10 million, this downside can be aggravated. It can be virtually a miracle that, regardless of how a lot it’s deliberate, an optimum scenario is reached in 2050,” says Joan Carles Salmerón, director of Terminus-centre d’Estudis del Transport. Salmerón also applauds that not only the most pressing and obvious problems are faced (such as Rodalies chaos), but that “you start to suppose, urgently, what can be wanted for the approaching years.”

Salmerón warns about a challenge that looms and does not affect alone, but also, transport: territorial imbalances. “We are concentrating 5 or 6 million folks within the metropolitan space, however we have now a great regional rail community that would host inhabitants progress in Camp de Tarragona, Girona or Lleida,” says the expert, who sees two large lines of work to improve the service: one, “enhance the capability and resistance” of the system; The other, “that the community may be very capillary, not solely within the huge axes.”

In education, the challenge in all likelihood will not have to serve more students, but to do better. “I’m not positive that the coed inhabitants will develop. Foreigners arrive in Spain in maturity, to work. And, even when they’ve extra kids, the native fertility fee may be very low,” reflects Lucas Gortázar, director of ESADEECPOL. “We are going to a better land. The sociocultural degree of households goes down and a collective effort should be made,” adds this educational policy expert. The solution is to put more resources. “We come from a secular financing deficit, and to deal with complexity it’s crucial to speculate extra.” And that serves training, however, absolutely, additionally for all the things else.