Less talking and more doing

We have serious problems in Catalonia and Spain. And we have arrived where we are because we have not mobilized identified solutions. Planning problems does not solve them, but it creates hope for a solution; it changes the perception of them. Let's list the present problems:Housing: price and accessibility. Education: deterioration of quality and conflict with teachers. Commuter rail: poor service and unresolved management problems, excessive unionism and lack of investment. Environment and agriculture: climate change, fires, outdated food supply chain, excessive bureaucracy. Distribution of public funding between autonomous communities and the central government: insufficient resources for autonomous communities with the largest part of current expenditure. Judiciary: in conflict with the executive and legislative branches. For these problems there are solutions.Housing. Municipalities should be able to transfer land to autonomous communities for 30 years, with the possibility of purchase at the end of the transfer. A public-private company (50%) builds and rents. Public capital provides a 30-year loan at 3%. Private capital, an investment with a 5% indexed remuneration. An 80 m² or 100 m² dwelling built on land transferred by a municipality costs approximately €150,000. The annual costs of a property under these conditions would amount to €7,500: €1,250 for loan interest; €2,500 for capital repayment, and €3,750 for the private investor's dividend.The annual income of a low-to-middle income family, after deducting income tax, is €25,000. Housing costs should be less than 30% of income: €7,500/year. It fits. This is the solution adopted in Austria – 100 years ago – and in the Netherlands – 40 years ago.Education. Resolving the conflict requires management and direction, not bureaucratic practices. The problem is not money – there has been an increase in teacher remuneration – nor the reduction in teacher-student ratios, which have decreased. The problem is the management of schools and the improvement of teacher training: the scientific component must be increased to promote an increase in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) vocations. Today, these studies represent 18% of university students, when they should represent at least 21%, to maintain harmonious development with R&D policies and the modernization of the economy. And students decide what to study while they are in secondary school.In the 2024-2025 academic year, there were approximately 39,000 primary and early childhood teachers in Catalonia, and around 43,000 in secondary and post-compulsory education. After the agreed-upon reforms, this represents an annual expenditure of 5.9 billion euros, to which 2.2 billion must be added for subsidized education. The problem is not economic: there has never been so much money. The negotiation has been union-based and not professional. The authority of school principals is reduced while the selection and promotion of teachers becomes more rigid; the opposite of what is needed. Having teachers as civil servants, and discontented, is a mistake. We are harming ourselves on an issue that is our future. The strength of Catalonia, Spain, and Europe lies in its people, and not excelling in education has a high cost. We are seeing it.Rodalies. The service is bad. In Catalonia there are two networks, with two different gauges that facilitate disintegration: the UIC gauge – which, in communicating Catalonia with Spain and France, must be the responsibility of the central government – and the Iberian gauge. Only commuter and regional trains (and freight that will cease to run in the future) run on this second network. There is an investment deficit of 15,000 millions of euros in this network over 40 years. If we add the new coast line – the current one is precarious – and the garages and workshops, the necessary investment is 20 billion euros. An expense of 2 billion euros over ten years is affordable.Renfe and Adif must be eliminated from Commuter and regional services. They are public companies of the central government, controlled by a corporate union, and in which the maintenance of union power will always be superior to the improvement of the service. This has been seen in recent months. This union, which defends its interests to the detriment of citizens', has fewer than 1,000 members in Catalonia. Overcoming this resistance to establish a new company to manage regional and commuter trains is feasible, despite union opposition. It is better to hire new staff than to "convert" the current ones. Those who do not wish to can stay at Renfe and Adif.An easy and urgent initiative is a train traffic information service that reaches users' mobile phones and allows them to know, in real time, the actual train schedules for that day. It would save thousands of hours for citizens and reduce the annoyance of not knowing when trains will arrive at stations. With current technology, the cost is practically nil.Environment and farming. We need a change in food production to improve efficiency and reduce the impact on the environment. We must increase plant production over animal production, which consumes more water and pollutes more. Eating habits cannot be changed suddenly, but they can be changed progressively with a 20-year policy.Financing. The new financing plan for the Autonomous Communities, pending approval, involves a transfer of €21,000 million per year from the central government to the communities. It is not enough, but it is a step in the right direction. If we don't do it, it will be for reasons of "narrow path" policy.Judiciary. There are more than 5,000 judges in Spain. How is it possible that there are almost no sanctions for inappropriate conduct? Although the majority are competent and carry out their activities professionally, it is not possible for everyone to always do everything well in a group of this size. A reform of the system is necessary, which, today, is politically impossible.I will leave for another article the issue of healthcare – a high-quality but overloaded and unsustainable service, a future problem that needs to be addressed now – and tourism – excessive concentration in peak months, need to reorient the offer towards less quantity and higher quality–. For the rest, it is clear that in many areas – not all – what needs to be done can be done. Politics must serve to solve problems, not to argue. Voters must be clear about this.