New year, new life

One year ends and another begins. These are times, both personally and collectively, to take stock and formulate new goals. For our country, Catalonia, 2025 presents a mixed picture. Some aspects are clearly positive, others less so, and some are frankly adverse.

Among the former, we can highlight the overall performance of the economy, which is growing significantly above the European average; the strong performance of exports, tourism, and foreign investment; the remarkable job creation; the growing consolidation of Barcelona and its metropolitan area as an advanced research center, especially in the health sector; the vibrant cultural creativity of the region, which is flourishing everywhere and incorporating new phenomena with significant international reach; our water reserves, which offset the anxieties and hardships caused by droughts; and the gradual reduction in interest rates, which eases the cost of loans, particularly mortgages. Better control of inflation, with its effect on the purchasing power of many families, and the country's current of solidarity, very often channeled through the associative fabric, which remains very much alive and well-organized.

Among the latter aspects, those that are not so positive, we should highlight the response of some public services to the needs and expectations of society, very often due to a chronic funding deficit and the evolution of the population: we are increasingly more numerous, older, and with more people coming from abroad, and this has an impact; the perception of a lack of security in cities and towns across the country; the comparative results of school performance, clearly below the country's educational needs and potential; the excessively high levels of absenteeism, which severely penalize the productivity of our economy; the great difficulty of translating economic growth into improved wages, with the average wage almost stagnant; And, to cite one last point, an alarming rise in mental disorders, which are increasingly affecting young people.

Finally, among the most adverse aspects, we can mention the deterioration of our democracy, affected by a series of scandals, a deficit of credibility in fundamental state institutions, and the very worrying inability to reach agreements on essential societal issues; the consolidation of markedly populist political options, which will solve nothing and only engulf everything; the fragmentation of our parliaments, which greatly hinders decision-making and the arrival of solutions; one of the lowest birth rates in Europe and the world, with the consequent pressure regarding immigration, which, if it manifests itself in high volumes and short periods of time, causes tensions of all kinds; the increase in social inequalities, always unacceptable in democratic systems based on equal opportunities and human rights, and completely inexplicable in times of economic growth; and the dysfunctional commuter rail system, which generates constant mobility headaches for millions of people. The lack of a clear energy sovereignty model leaves Europe defenseless and weakened against world powers that don't always have our best interests at heart, with a particular impact on Catalonia due to our lack of foresight in implementing an energy model that responds to both environmental challenges and the growing demands for electricity consumption. And ultimately, housing prices create insurmountable barriers to access for a segment of the population.

There will be time, during the coming year, to explore possible solutions to the long but always incomplete list of accumulating challenges. However, given that the saying refers to a new year, a new life, I'm sending a first letter to the Three Kings. 2026 will be an election year in several regions, and perhaps for the entire country. The political landscape is turbulent enough to foresee any outcome. However, everything points to there being no elections in Catalonia. This will be the last year, because from then on an intense and lengthy electoral cycle will begin. Therefore, we must make the most of next year. Aside from the general desire to end the war caused by the Russian invasion, which affects our security as Europeans, the first lines of the letter to the King and Queen would be: the definitive and full implementation of the amnesty law, not so much to normalize anything, but to guarantee that everyone can defend their political options with equal opportunities; the concrete implementation of funding for Catalonia that fulfills what was agreed upon, that is, a model of fiscal sovereignty that allows the Generalitat to manage taxes and substantially increases Catalan public resources; the approval of the Catalan budget, after years of extensions that are difficult to justify; and a major agreement on housing, which, if we truly want to begin solving the problem, must clearly prioritize a policy of incentives and not just limitations, punishments, or insecurity, because without the full involvement of the private sector, there will continue to be many promises and few solutions. The letter to the Three Kings could go on... but if these initial demands were met, Catalonia would be better off.