5.295 million: The Generalitat sets a new spending record that goes from one year to another

BarcelonaLast year, the Generalitat once again broke a record for year-on-year spending. This practice, a consequence of budgetary insufficiency, meaning that projected public accounts do not cover all real expenditure, soared in 2025 to 5,295 million euros, 12% more than the previous year and more than a tenth of all non-financial expenditure for the year.

This is an unprecedented level for a year in which the 2023 budgets were again extended despite a credit supplement of 5,988 million euros, backed by ERC. In any case, this trend only serves to perpetuate the mismatch between what is budgeted and what actually has to be spent, which has become a structural issue, according to the Generalitat's general accounts for 2025, prepared by the General Intervention.

This new increase occurs after this practice was contained in 2024, standing at 4,726 million euros, a sum similar to the previous year. The new escalation in what is called displaced spending, which particularly affects the Health sector, is due "mainly to the impact of the 2.5% pay increase in salaries and social security contributions in 2025, which was paid in the first quarter of 2026". For civil servants, it represented 195 million euros, and for those in positions of free designation, 9 million euros. Health service contracts also contributed. Furthermore, the productivity bonus earned in 2025, paid in April 2026, for approximately 83 million euros, must also be taken into account, as recorded in the 2025 general accounts.

Of the total figure from last year, 3,372 million correspond to pending invoices from the Servei Català de Salut (SCS) and the Institut Català de la Salut (ICS), where budgetary insufficiency and the effect of health and pharmacy contracts are traditionally more keenly felt, as well as a lack of sufficient resources from chapter II (expenses for goods and services) of the ICS. The report states that "the fact of having to face deferred expenses from the previous year chronifies the existence of deferred expenses year after year".

Regarding deferred expenses in the case of the general administration and autonomous entities, "this generally does not respond to reasons of budgetary insufficiency but rather to the specificities of certain expenses such as the deferred payment in force for social contributions, the long processing time for dependency aid, or the payment of pending commitments in aid for local nursery schools".

Given the increase in pending invoices, the government then presided over by Pere Aragonès, of ERC, had planned to include an extraordinary fund of 800 million in the 2024 accounts to begin to normalize the situation and prevent delayed debts from continuing to chronify budgetary insufficiency. But the budgets did not move forward and Aragonès called elections, which were won by the PSC.

Chronified insufficiency

The expenditure figure that goes from one year to the next consolidates a budgetary shortfall that, as the Audit Office has stated on more than one occasion, has become "chronic". The previous report already warned that the year-on-year evolution during the period 2014-2024 "shows, in general, an upward trend, except in those years – such as 2015 – in which credit extensions were implemented to finance deferred expenditure from previous years".

Health Budget

The effect of budgetary insufficiency in Health is maintained every year. In fact, by June of the current fiscal year, the budget has increased to 13,104.1 million, compared to the 11,210.3 million that had been initially planned. According to the mid-year budget execution report, purchases of services from CatSalut to Siscat entities (the comprehensive public health system of Catalonia) are increasing, and one of the contributing factors is "the accounting of expenses from previous years".

“As long as the health budget continues to be below actual health spending, between 3,000 and 5,000 million euros of annual public debt will continue to be generated, a situation to which, unfortunately, we are becoming accustomed and which only worsens year after year,” as denounced by Metges de Catalunya at the time. The deviation between the budgeted amount and the amount actually spent is between 15% and 20%.

The reinforcement of public accounts is linked to regional financing, which continues to make no progress. The PSC and ERC agreed on a formula for the Catalan Tax Agency (ATC) to collect all taxes, starting with personal income tax. In any case, the Council of Fiscal and Financial Policy (CPFF), where the model was to begin to be debated on July 29, was canceled due to the announcement by the PP communities that they would not attend, which complicates progress. Only the Spanish government and Catalonia support the reform, not even Asturias, governed by the socialists. Now the new meeting is scheduled for September 4.

There is still no date to send the bill to Congress, where it could foreseeably pass the first reading, without certainty of being able to push it forward in the final vote due to the significant opposition. With the new model, Catalonia would earn almost 4,700 million more.