Now everyone understands it

It has been four months since the Fenix Report was released, and something unusual has happened in this country: the conversation has changed. It is not that the data has changed – the data was already there – but rather the way of looking at it. Before May, the phrase "the economy is doing well" meant that GDP was growing. Today, when someone says it, there is always someone else who asks: "And the GDP per capita?" This question, so simple, is what the report has managed to install in the Catalan public debate. And for that alone, it has been worth it.

Because the paradox that the Fenix Report put on the table continues to unfold every quarter before us. In 2025, Catalonia's GDP grew by 2.7%, and in the second quarter of 2026, it advanced by 3% year-on-year, above the major European economies. These are figures to celebrate. But in the same period, the population has reached 8,210,710 inhabitants, with a year-on-year growth of 86,584 people, or 1.1%. In a quarter of a century, Catalonia has grown by nearly two million people. And this is where the official narrative and people's lives diverge. 24.8% of the population was at risk of poverty or social exclusion in 2025, eight tenths more than in 2024; the at-risk-of-poverty rate stood at 18.9%, a point and a half more than the previous year, and 35.5% of the population declares being unable to cope with an unforeseen expense of 900 euros. GDP grows, population grows, poverty grows. Three lines that rise simultaneously and that, until four months ago, almost no one related.

This is what the report has made understood. That GDP measures the size of the economy and GDP per capita measures the prosperity of those who live there. That a country can be larger every year and its population poorer every year if growth is based on adding poorly paid labor instead of adding value. That when the neighbor's family does not notice the growth, it is not because they do not know how to read the statistics: it is because the statistics do not speak about them. And that public services are not under strain only due to occasional mismanagement but, mainly, due to an implacable arithmetic: if the jobs being created do not generate enough contributions to pay for schools, primary healthcare centers, and nursing homes for those who occupy them, each new job adds demand for services without adding the resources to them. Housing, healthcare, education... all the queues we stand in have the same origin.

But when we talk about the deterioration of public services in Catalonia, there is a second half to the explanation that the report expressly left out (its authors wanted to focus on the productive system, on what can be corrected from here) and which we can no longer leave out: the endemic underfunding of Catalan society. The fiscal deficit with the State was 21.092 billion euros in 2022, 8.2% of GDP, after having reached a maximum of 22.013 billion in 2021, 9.6%. To get an idea, it is equivalent to more than half of what all the departments of the Generalitat spend or the joint budget for Health and Education. Catalonia contributed 77.742 billion to the State coffers, 19.3% of the total, and received 56.650 billion, 14%. And within the autonomous financing system, which has been expired since 2014, Catalonia is the third territory that contributes the most tax revenue per inhabitant and the tenth in resources received; other communities with much lower tax capacity systematically receive more per inhabitant.

Let's put the two halves together now. In twenty-five years, Catalonia has gained nearly two million inhabitants—30% growth, when the European Union has grown by 5.3%—with the same euros per capita to fund schools, primary healthcare centers (CAP), and nursing homes, and with a growing portion of these inhabitants occupying jobs that do not generate enough contributions to pay for the services they consume. More people, the same distribution formula, less revenue per head: this is the explosive cocktail that explains waiting lists, portable classrooms, and the general feeling that everything is declining while the figures say everything is increasing. And it cannot be solved with patches. The new agreed-upon financing model, which would provide an additional 4.686 billion by 2027, is a necessary step forward, but it does not cover even a quarter of the fiscal deficit. It must be improved, but one way or another, we have no choice but to take advantage of it, take the money, and plug the holes. We have no other option if we think about the citizens of this country. A country that grows by 1.1% annually in population cannot live with its financing expired for more than ten years. We can accept provisional lesser evils because we are between a rock and a hard place, but the country must be aware that we are not even close to the solution and that we must continue to demand financing that leads to Catalonia being fiscally sovereign. Catalonia needs resources per inhabitant to grow, at the very least, at the same rate as the inhabitants grow. As long as this is not the case, every new neighbor is, for the Generalitat, one more citizen to attend to with the previous year's money.

That is why the work that comes now is not to defend the report. The report defends itself and every publication by Idescat corroborates it. The work is for there to be consequences. If we accept that what counts is the GDP per capita, then every public decision should be measured by this yardstick: does this investment, this license, this tax incentive, this employment plan, raise everyone's income or just increase the size of the whole? And if we accept that funding is the other half of the problem, then no negotiation with the State can be considered closed while the resources per inhabitant do not keep pace with the inhabitants and the increase in the cost of living they have to face. A country that asks itself these two questions before deciding is a different country from the one we have had for the last twenty-five years. It will not be quick nor will it be comfortable. But the first step to changing course is to know where we were heading, and that, now, we all know.