Making budgets is for 'losers'
With the new year, everything evolves, but real politics, the management of public affairs, remains mired in chaos because at the territorial levels that concern us (Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain), governing bodies lack both the strength and the will to think broadly, with a long-term vision; they are prisoners of tactical maneuvering and fragmentation, two great sins of democracy that, a century ago, ignited the flames of fascism. We are falling into the same errors of the past and into familiar traps, while fascists forge their own path by blending into trends, technology, and a kind of counterfactual modernity.
Fascism draws its malign capacity for seduction, but also from the empty rhetoric of a certain superficial antifascism and from the exasperation of a democratic majority that feels alienated from any decision-making power and forced to relinquish even minimal expectations of prosperity. The stock market rises as much as poverty rates. The system is broken and shows no inclination to regenerate. Stagnation is the natural state of affairs.
As an example, consider a piece of news that's starting to look less like news: in 2026, Catalonia and Spain will be governed by an extended budget. Once again. The governments of Pedro Sánchez and Salvador Illa will be managing accounts approved in 2023. The disastrous consequences of this paralysis have been perfectly described by economists, but the narrative the PSOE is trying to impose is that governing with a budget is cowardly. That is, issuing decrees without planning, legislative updates, or significant investment allocations is a demonstration of resilience.
In Catalonia, on top of this anomaly, we have to swallow the daily rhetoric of "normality" and "concord," even though we still have people in exile, and the amnesty, wrested from us by force by the PSOE government, is being applied slowly and capriciously by a judiciary completely aligned with the right. It is also considered "normal" that we are governed by a basic law not voted on by the citizens (the remnants of the 2006 Statute, crushed by the Constitutional Court) and that the pro-independence movement has to act under the constant threat of repression. Furthermore, the Parliament is so fragmented that there is no way to seriously address such urgent challenges as the housing crisis, education, language, or infrastructure.
If it's a matter of assigning blame, I suppose everyone will have their preferences. The truth is that both the governing party and the opposition with aspirations to govern must seek agreements and make concessions, without being swayed by those who consider any pact a betrayal. But in the Catalan case, the PSC has the most unfinished business, because Salvador Illa obtained his investiture thanks to an agreement with ERC that, so far, has not been honored. The same is true for Pedro Sánchez with Junts.
If even the faint voices within the PSOE are whispering that the only alternative to the PP-Vox alliance is a plurinational Spain, then the PSC should understand all the more that clinging to outdated and moth-eaten constitutional principles will prevent it from reaching lasting agreements with the pro-independence parties, and in this case, it will be forced to accept the consequences. Similarly, Junts and ERC must begin to acknowledge that, unfortunately, the anticipated rise of Aliança Catalana diminishes the possibility of forming a viable pro-independence majority. And there's no need to give up on anything, or stop hoping for better times, to understand that some things cannot wait in a country as fraught as ours, a country with justifiable reasons to question whether we are heading in the right direction.