Isla-Ayuso clash over financing: "Madrid is practicing an unsupportive fiscal policy"

MadridSalvador Illa has assured that in the "coming weeks and months" there will be "news" on the specification of the new financing model and has sent a dart to the autonomous communities that oppose this issue, claiming that "Catalonia has always been supportive." An approach that has once again caused a clash with one of her main detractors, such as Isabel Díaz Ayuso. The Madrid president has denounced to X that the president of the Generalitat "is attacking shamelessly and unethically" after Isla had rightly accused her in an interview on Catalunya Ràdio this Monday morning Madrid is accused of "practicing an unsupportive fiscal policy.".

The Prime Minister has criticized the Madrid president for "lowering taxes but then asking for more resources." Ayuso, on the other hand, has repeatedly defended the opposite position: that her region is not unsupportive—one of the arguments she has already deployed in other clashes with Illa on this issue is that it contributes "70% of the common fund"—and that what is unsupportive is proposing singular financing for Catalonia. "Let's see how the left in Madrid and throughout Spain defends the privileges for Catalonia and the shameful meeting with Puigdemont," said the leader of the Madrid PP.

The Popular Party attacked Isla after he announced that he would meet with the leader of Junts in Brussels on Tuesday, calling him an emissary of Pedro Sánchez. In an appearance on Monday, Alberto Núñez Feijóo said that this shows that the president of the Generalitat "cannot be trusted either." "Perhaps he intends to replace Santos Cerdán as Puigdemont's interlocutor, which would be disrespectful to all Catalans and the state of the autonomous regions," said the Popular Party president.

"He is sending him to promise Puigdemont the impossible and try to retain power for himself and his head for a few more months, and he is once again humiliating the Spanish people," also stated the secretary general of the PP, Miguel Tellado, in X. Along the same lines, the Popular Party spokesman in the Parliament, Juan Fernández, calling the island "toxic," "hypocritical," "a scam," and a "puppet" serving "blackmail." pro-independence party, and has requested that he appear before the plenary session. Likewise, the far-right Vox party also registered the request for his appearance, and its secretary general, Ignacio Garriga, reacted to X by saying that Isla's executive is "a government of criminals" with the support of "criminals."

Feijóo also took the opportunity to attack the debt forgiveness and the "blackmail" he believes the independence movement is carrying out within the PSOE with the new financing. "They are building a first-class Spain and a second-class one," stated the PP leader. The day before the approval of the debt forgiveness for the autonomous regions by the Council of Ministers, Feijóo once again rejected the measure, which he sees as a way for all Spaniards to "pay for the mismanagement of the pro-independence governments." "It is one more ruse to prolong the agony of the Sánchez government," he asserted. In another message to X Ayuso, he warned that the forgiveness is a "first step" to later remove Catalonia from the ordinary system of regional financing and that it will be "the rest of the Spaniards" who will pay the debt.