Time to unblock the financing
After more than a year of negotiations between ERC and the PSOE (with the PSC caught in the middle), the moment of truth is approaching regarding Catalonia's special funding arrangements. This January, the Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, is scheduled to publish her proposed distribution of funds, an exercise that hasn't been undertaken in Spain since the last funding system was approved in 2009. The issue of personal income tax revenue will be addressed later, given that the current Catalan tax system is already underfunded. However, Montero must present figures, and the one of greatest interest in Catalonia is how much additional money the Generalitat (Catalan government) will receive to finance its responsibilities. But it will also be necessary to see how the other regions fare, especially the Community of Madrid, which benefits from the capital city effect and engages in highly unfair tax dumping compared to the rest of the country, as well as Andalusia, the most populous autonomous community.
What is known so far is that Montero will prioritize Andalusia and Catalonia as the regions receiving the most additional resources and will seek ways to penalize Madrid. It's no coincidence that the minister will soon leave her post to prepare for the battle against Juanma Moreno Bonilla in the Andalusian elections in June. The question remains whether the agreement will adhere to the principle of ordinality, as established in the investiture pact for Salvador Illa between ERC and the PSC, since the PSOE refused to put a damper on it at the last Generalitat-State Bilateral Commission meeting.
What's really at stake is whether Pedro Sánchez will have the courage to push through the agreement and defend it before his own party. males and the predictable opposition from the right. If he is able to explain to the public that certain territories, especially the Balearic Islands, the Valencian Community, and Catalonia, have been financially mistreated since the autonomous system was implemented and that the time has come to address this. And that the data indicates that democracy has not served to rebalance the different territories, but rather that what has occurred is a concentration of resources in Madrid, which has acted like a vacuum cleaner, leaving the surrounding areas barren. In reality, the new financing system should serve to test whether Sánchez has the courage to propose an alternative to the centralist model that has functioned until now and to envision a different future.
This new future must also materialize in other projects, such as the transfer of commuter rail services to Catalonia, which should also see significant progress this January, or the construction of the Mediterranean Corridor. Because, among other things, the radial and Madrid-centric model has led to greater inequality and a right-wing ideological hegemony, as seen in Extremadura. If Sánchez wants even the slightest chance of remaining in office after the next elections, he must accelerate all the changes he promised. And the first step is funding.