Catalan fishermen have reacted in the opposite way to the agreement on trawling reached in Brussels. While the fleet of Ràpita (Tarragona), the most important in Catalonia, has rejected it, seeing it as “blackmail”, that of Palamós (Girona) has supported it.
The Fisheries Ministers of the European Union reached an agreement this morning that involves reversing the drastic reduction in trawling days initially proposed by the European Commission and which had unnerved the Spanish fishing sector.
The agreement, according to the Minister of Agriculture, Luís Planas, will allow trawler fishermen in the Mediterranean to fish “almost the same days” as before if they do so in a sustainable way. The compensation mechanism that will allow the boats to maintain their work consists of measures regarding meshes (nets), closures (closure of fishing areas of the sea) and one related to flying doors.
The Palamós Fishermen’s Guild has been satisfied with the agreement. The vice president of the brotherhood, Francesc Benaiges, has celebrated that with the exceptions that have been agreed, fishermen will be able to go fishing on the same days as now.
The model that Europe has adopted “is the one that has been applied for years” in Palamós, indicated Benaiges, who has made himself available to other brotherhoods that need it. However, from Palamós they trust that there will be a distribution of kilos of shrimp for each brotherhood and that it will not be global, since they are concerned about the 10% reduction proposed by the agreement.
On the other hand, the Rápita Fishermen’s Guild (Montsià), which brings together the largest trawling fleet in Catalonia, has assessed the agreement “negatively”. The secretary of the entity, Joan Balagué, has indicated that the starting point continues to be the European Commission’s proposal of 27 annual fishing days, and has regretted “the blackmail” of conditioning the increase in the activity permit to new measures.
“We will once again have a reduction in days and fishing capacity,” Balagué criticized in statements to the Catalan News Agency (ACN). The Rapito fishermen feel “cheated and disappointed” because in the calculation they are penalized again for the two months of voluntary closure that they carry out.
For his part, the president of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, has defended the agreement after “a very tough negotiation.” “Alliances have had to be made with other countries, and it has turned out quite well,” Illa remarked during the plenary session of the Parliament.
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