Ayuso calls for revolt against the new financing: if the PP does not go, it is not approved

BarcelonaThe Fiscal and Financial Policy Council (CPFF) will foreseeably validate this Friday the proposal for a new financing model put forward by the Spanish government, in coordination with the Generalitat and ERC. The Ministry of Finance, which holds half of the votes, has the majority guaranteed because it only needs one regional minister to vote in favor, and it will have at least two: Catalonia and the Canary Islands. But there is a loophole to torpedo, at least temporarily, the calendar: if half of the CPFF members do not show up, the meeting will not be valid, as established by article 10 of the body's regulations. The president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, is clinging to this.

Her government will snub the Minister of Finance and is calling for the rest of the PP ministers to do the same. The strategy, however, has few options to move forward because, for the moment, sources consulted by ARA explain that the Balearic Islands and Aragon will attend, and Murcia and Cantabria have also announced that they will do so.

"It is a financing model that breaks with the equality of all Spaniards and seeks to whitewash the debt generated by the corrupt management of the pro-independence governments and which the socialist Salvador Illa has followed and intensified," says the statement made public by the Madrid PP this Thursday to justify the snub. It is not an unforeseen position, because it has already been expressed internally in meetings with the PP leadership and the rest of the regional Economy and Finance ministers of the party. "The only way that this agreement [for financing] cannot materialize tomorrow at the CPFF is if there is no quorum at the meeting. The absence of all the autonomous communities governed by the PP would mean the paralysis" of this Friday's vote.

There are 18 seats at the CPFF. The Minister of Finance, Arcadi España, and the Economy or Finance ministers of all the common regime communities (15, excluding the Basque Country and Navarre) and also the two autonomous cities, Ceuta and Melilla, are part of it. Therefore, nine regional ministers would have to join the snub requested by Madrid. The PP governs in 12 autonomous regions –in some, hand in hand with Vox–, but there are already at least four that will not join the boycott. Sources consulted by ARA explain that the Balearic Islands and Aragon will go to the CPFF meeting to vote no, and they have also announced that Murcia and Cantabria will attend. Ayuso's plan, therefore, seems like it will end up failing.