These are hot days as far as Cercanías and also Media Distancia are concerned. But there is no immediate remedy for this, because it is not a consequence of stupidity, but of a model of national construction in Spain expressed with the infrastructure policy. A model established for centuries, which we discussed at length in Spain, capital ParisThis model was challenged by the independence process, which was dismantled by the incompetence of the protagonists in the autonomous institutions and the determination of those who opposed it from the Spanish institutions. In the Process, not in the model. But shedding tears over milk already spilled is only an exercise in melancholy that helps neither the person who does it nor the person who receives it. The infrastructures will remain as they are, because politics will continue to be the same; those who decide know that all this mess has not had and will not have electoral sanction. Identity weighs more. And in a couple of decades it will be talked about again, if at all.
In the meantime, it would be advisable to ensure consistency in whatever comes out of Catalan politics, however poor it may be. Above all, to avoid confusing the public even more than it already is. And the cancellation of part of the autonomous liquidity fund, the famous FLA, has generated a real ceremony of confusion.
The most hasty announcement of the partial forgiveness was made by the Catalan party to the pact, explaining that 17.104 billion euros were forgiven, 22% of the Generalitat's debt with the FLA. And that this would mean a reduction of between 200 and 250 million euros per year in interest paid by the Generalitat to the State. But, shortly after, the Minister of Finance and PSOE candidate in the next Andalusian elections, María Jesús Montero, announced partial forgiveness. urbi et orbi, even to those who had no debt with the FLA [sic]. In short, the debt forgiven with the autonomous communities of common regime (Euskadi and Navarra eat separately) would be 83,252 million euros.
The lottery had different effects in each community, depending on the comparison parameters adopted. This newspaper reported in detail at the end of last month, which highlighted that (1) Andalusia was the region that gained the most in the volume of debt forgiven, (2) the Canary Islands were leaders in the percentage of FLA debt forgiven (with Catalonia and the Valencian Community in the red), and (3) Andalusia, the Valencian Community, has been protected by the central government). Whether the reference population for the calculation (the "squeezed population") is a trap is complex and will be left for another day.
However, those who do not conform do so because they do not want to, it is said, and it does not matter if others earn more if we save a couple of hundred million in interest here. Thus the Generalitat will be able to spend more and move on. It is here, precisely here, where this interpretation becomes a problem, because it is inconsistent with the Catalan version in the discussion on fiscal balances, which had been imposed on the relevance of neutralizing the annual deficit; because if the State has spent more than it has earned, this debt will have to be paid in the future by the citizens (in our case, the Catalans). And, if there are still intense discussions about whether it is necessary to take into account the benefit for the regions of the money that the State spends in the capital (technically speaking, burden-benefit versus monetary flow), only some bizarre characters deny although it is necessary to neutralize the deficit.
How does this translate into the evaluation of the partial forgiveness of the FLA? As with the fiscal balances: neutralizing the deficit. Because the forgiven debt that the autonomous communities will no longer finance will be financed by the State, the State being the taxpayers of the common regime regions. This means that Catalan taxpayers, like all those who are not Basque or Navarrese, will pay for the forgiveness with state taxes, just as we have paid the interest paid by our community until now.
And how We neutralize the deficit In the case of Catalan taxpayers? Comparing the percentage of the FLA forgiveness that they have assigned us and the percentage that we are entitled to from the financing of the state debt that the autonomous communities used to pay. In numbers, the situation goes like this: Catalan taxpayers get 20.5% of the FLA forgiven in all of Spain (17,104 of 83,252 million). How much will we have to pay? We can approximate it by the percentage of Spanish GDP (except the Basque Country and Navarre) generated in Catalonia: 21%. Or by the percentage of state taxes collected in Catalonia; the average over the last ten years is 20.6%. The difference between what they forgive us and what we are going to pay is the profit or loss. In our case, a very slight loss; either head for hands (Here is the result for all regions).
In short, we Catalans will pay on one side – the State – what we will save (or spend more) on the other – the Generalitat. It is called general equilibriumAnd, more generally, we may end up losing a few feathers when we debate fiscal balances again. Although, in this case, it will probably not have any practical significance either.
