Salvador Illa orders the ministers to prepare the 2027 budgets

BarcelonaHas acabado de aprobar the 2026 budgets, much later than I expected, but the Government is now setting in motion the machinery for those of 2027. This Monday the Official Gazette of the Generalitat of Catalonia (DOGC) publishes the order from the Minister of Economy, Alícia Romero, for all departments and public companies to begin preparing next year's accounts. Until September 10, internal amendments to the draft can be proposed, and by October 23, most variables should be finalized. However, this does not necessarily mean that the budgets will end up being approved by the executive council: the PSC has already been burned enough by the recent negotiation with ERC, which forced Illa to withdraw the 2026 budget when it was already being processed.

Although socialist sources have long noted that with this year's accounts they could reach the end of the legislature (2028), the Generalitat has not ruled out being able to approve a second consecutive budget, as the Pere Aragonès government already achieved in 2022 and 2023. The new project will be developed following the budgetary stability objectives that have recently been set by the Council of Fiscal and Financial Policy: the deficit cannot exceed 0.1% of GDP (although Catalonia is negotiating to be able to raise it) and spending cannot increase by more than 4%.

"Despite strong geopolitical and commercial uncertainty on a global scale, the preparation of the budgets for 2027 arrives at a relatively favorable moment for Catalonia, with a solid, open, and diversified economy. In 2025, Catalan GDP grew by 2.7%, above initial forecasts and with positive momentum. This good performance has allowed us to face 2026 with a growth forecast of 2.2%, which contrasts with the stagnation in neighboring countries," reads the order signed by Romero.

The potential partners to approve the accounts will be the same ones with which the PSC sustains its majority in Parliament, that is, ERC and Comuns. And the probability of moving them forward will be higher if, in parallel, the three parties are able to convince Junts to approve the new financing model in Congress, which would give the Generalitat almost 4,700 million euros more during 2027.