Now that the Illa government has managed to push through its own, it is a good time to point out that, both in Catalonia and in Spain, the negotiation of budgets has become a little theater of gesticulations, pretense, and bad scripts of drama or comedy. It seeks to find twists that are exciting, because politics is reduced to a fair of emotions and politicians live waiting to find their moments –fleeting, ephemeral– of brilliance. This applies as much to the parties in government and their partners as to those in opposition. Within this dynamic of bluster, shock tactics, and unbridled populism, budgets appear as a golden opportunity to gain prominence.In Catalonia, budgets were always approved during Pujol's tenure, and also with the two tripartite governments (with more problems: these were the years of the Dragon Khan, and the first effects of the crisis began to be felt). From 2011 onwards, when Artur Mas stopped counting on Alícia Sánchez Camacho's votes, budgets entered a period of uncertainty: these were the years of the Procés, and instability was increasing until the referendum of October 1st and the application of Article 155. From 2018 onwards, with the presidency of Quim Torra (then Aragonès, now Illa), and with governments from Junts, ERC, and the PSC, the difficulties in approving budgets were not related to truly exceptional situations –as the Procés was– but to simple calculations and staging by the different political parties. Or to political maneuvering, if you prefer. Something different, but at the same time similar, is seen in the Spanish case: González and Aznar were almost always able to approve budgets punctually, Zapatero with some problems, and with Rajoy an era of uncertainty began (his government had to manage the global financial crisis in Spain, and did so in such a grotesque and corrupt manner that the Spanish government ended up with its accounts overseen by Brussels). With Sánchez, uncertainty has been accentuated by having had to govern in a minority and with the ultranationalist right in a state of total political war.All this does not mean that politicians from before were more lukewarm, but rather that they saw the negotiation and approval of the budget law as what it is: the law that allows the normal functioning of the entire public system, a matter important enough not to put obstacles in its way unless for reasons, let us repeat, truly exceptional. Lately, it has become an occasion for showmanship and overacting: those who vote in favor of the budgets want to assume that they have managed to wrest great advances from the government of the day –even if they are railway lines fifteen years down the line– and those who oppose them denounce the budgets as an act of treason and vassalage (they would approve them in the same way, or a similar one). So much comedy is not only sterile: it is also a contempt for the understanding of citizens, and an abandonment of the public responsibility that one is supposed to want to exercise.
