The Barcelona Chamber of Commerce estimates that Catalonia requires an additional €45bn to counter infrastructure deficit until 2030.

According to the results of a study it presented on Friday – 'Economic impact of Spain's underinvestment in Catalonia's infrastructure' – Spain also failed to invest €8bn of a total of over €33bn that had been budgeted in 2001 and which would have helped create 111,500 jobs.

The Chamber of Commerce study goes on to claim that the investment gap in Catalonia has not yet been made up for since 2014 when the country began to recover from the economic crisis, and that, in fact, it has been lost ground vis-à-vis other parts of Spain despite accounting for 19% of its GDP.

All in all, the chamber maintains that had Catalonia received the total budgeted amount, there would have been an additional €20bn turnover and €3.8bn for the public coffers.