The creator of a website designed to make Catalan public subsidies transparent has spoken out. His site’s viral success was quickly followed by a sudden outage and the disappearance of a million data records, igniting a political firestorm and accusations of government censorship.
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Gerard Martínez Adsuar, a 32-year-old data analyst from Caldes de Montbui, launched Subvencions.cat just over ten days ago. The site provides a simple, searchable interface for tracking subsidies awarded by public bodies in Catalonia, a task that previously required navigating complex official portals. His work quickly captivated public attention, generating 30,000 page views from 5,000 users in a single day.
However, the project’s success was short-lived. On Tuesday afternoon, the government data feed powering the site was abruptly cut off, rendering it useless. When access was restored on Wednesday, Martínez Adsuar discovered approximately one million records were missing, primarily those related to local council subsidies.
A ‘Weekend Project’ Sparks a Firestorm
Martínez Adsuar explained his motivation to the newspaper Ara Cat. “I decided to push ahead with this portal for transparency,” he said, arguing that “it’s not the same for data to be public as for it to be accessible.”
The self-taught programmer, who runs the data analysis firm Cienciadedades.cat, revealed the project’s humble origins. “This is a weekend project,” he noted. “I did it on a silly Sunday; I spent eight hours on the procurement website and another eight on the subsidies one,” he added, crediting artificial intelligence for the rapid automation of the data.
The outage and missing data quickly escalated into a political issue. In the Parliament of Catalonia, People’s Party (PP) leader Alejandro Fernández accused the government of “censoring websites.” He lamented the “waste” of resources, highlighting the nearly €5 billion in subsidies distributed annually. Similarly, Josep Maria Cruset, deputy spokesperson for Junts in Congress, took to social media, demanding the executive “clarify what they have removed from the database.” He warned that otherwise, “any other information the Government may publish will lack credibility.”
Government Cites Technical Glitch
The Generalitat de Catalunya denied any attempt at censorship. Sources from the Department of Economy attributed the issue to “problems with the ‘dumping’ of data,” insisting it was “a technical problem that is on its way to being solved.” They stressed that data from the Generalitat itself was restored on Wednesday. Furthermore, the missing local council data remains available, though less accessibly, on Spain’s national subsidy database.
Martínez Adsuar initially found the vague explanation of “technical problems” ‘strange.’ He also acknowledged the complex political reaction to his tool, which far-right groups heavily promoted.
“It has had a lot of resonance, particularly on the far right,” he said, clarifying that he does not support their views. He expressed concern about users targeting specific groups, such as Muslim associations or anti-homophobia organisations. “I think we should debate without pointing fingers at collectives,” he stated.
The debate over public funds is a constant in Catalan politics. It touches everything from business incentives, such as those detailed in the plan to boost Catalan language use in companies, to funding for social programmes, highlighted by charities’ demands to tackle homelessness.
An Expert Weighs In
Technology journalist Albert Cuesta offered a potential technical explanation. He noted that the Generalitat is currently overhauling all its websites, a process involving the migration of large data files which can lead to errors.
“It’s plausible that the system went down with an import error, without any intention of hiding it,’ Cuesta told Ara Cat. He added that the information’s availability on another database reduces suspicion of a cover-up. However, he raised a pertinent question about efficiency: ‘Another matter is why we have to have two databases, with the risk that they are not synchronised.’
For now, Martínez Adsuar manages the fallout from his viral creation. This project, born from a desire for clarity, has inadvertently shone a light on the sensitive intersection of public data, government infrastructure, and political scrutiny.
