Video streaming quotas give Spain''s govt key to 2022 budget

Madrid, Nov 23 (AP) A Catalan pro-independence party is announcing plans to back Spain's national budget for next year, a move that cements the immediate future of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez's left-wing coalition.

ERC, a left-wing pro-republic Catalan separatist party, said Tuesday that its 13 lawmakers in the national parliament's Lower House will vote in favor of Sánchez's 2022 spending proposal after the government agreed to pass a new broadcast law that encourages content production and exhibition in three official minority languages.

The deal means that Spain will impose a 5% tax on broadcast production that will be partially used to boost content in Catalan, Galician and Basque languages, ERC spokesman Gabriel Rufián told reporters. He said that one-fifth of the European production quota in streaming platforms will also be offered in one of the official languages other than Spanish.

The approval of the government's spending plan is regarded as a crucial test of the government's support and gives the Socialists' coalition with the anti-austerity United We Can a boost in Sánchez's plan to see out his term, which ends in 2023.

Failure to pass it would have meant pressure on the prime minister to call an early election. (AP) RS RS