The PP is harming its citizens by going against Catalonia

The spectacle of Wednesday's Fiscal and Financial Policy Council meeting, where Vice President and Finance Minister María Jesús Montero presented the proposed new financing system to her regional counterparts, can only be described as lamentable. Never before has a Spanish government put so much money on the table to transfer to the Autonomous Communities. And yet, the PP-governed regions have rushed to reject the system with the sole argument that it was agreed upon with Catalonia, and specifically with ERC. Anti-Catalan sentiment remains such a significant driver of the conservative vote that the PP is willing to go so far as to renounce a substantial amount of money simply because it considers it "tainted" by separatism, thereby harming its own citizens.

The argument that this new system privileges Catalonia is fallacious. As the Vice President rightly pointed out, the region receiving the most resources overall is Andalusia, governed by the PP; The region that will see the greatest increase in per capita income is Murcia, also governed by the PP, while Cantabria, also with a PP government, will remain the region receiving the most resources per capita. Catalonia will improve its position, it's true, but the result is not a privilege, but rather a correction of a manifestly unfair situation. The PP will have to explain very clearly in its territories, especially in the Mediterranean regions, how to relinquish billions of euros that are so necessary to finance public services such as healthcare and education.

The opposition of the president of Castilla-La Mancha, the anti-Sánchez socialist Emiliano García-Page, to a system that clearly benefits him deserves special mention. His behavior is similar to that of another socialist, Javier Lambán of Aragon (who passed away last August), who chose to forgo hosting the Winter Olympics simply because he would have had to share them with Catalonia. Both the attitude of the People's Party (PP) and that of these two supposed socialists are a clear example of what politics should never be. Within Catalonia, one of the latest voices to speak out has been that of former president of the Generalitat, Artur Mas, who has called on Junts to negotiate improvements to the system instead of entrenching themselves in the current one. not to everything because it's insufficient. If the model must fall, let it not be because of Catalan nationalist votes, because we don't know when another window of opportunity will open. Voting in favor of this or any other system doesn't, of course, mean giving up anything. We can continue to defend the economic agreement or different criteria for calculating resources (introducing, for example, the cost of living), without having to give up money that Catalonia clearly needs like the air it breathes to address the problems of its citizens. Sticking with the current model would be catastrophic for the Generalitat, especially with the prospect of a future PP-Vox government. In fact, all the models, those negotiated by CiU, PSC, or ERC, have represented progress, perhaps less than expected, but progress nonetheless. And often, not moving forward, even modestly, doesn't mean staying the same, but rather taking steps backward.