The "fun" tax inspector negotiating Catalan financing

Barcelona / MadridNegotiations between the Spanish government, the Catalan government (Generalitat), and the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) regarding a new financing model for Catalonia have been ongoing for weeks. If an agreement is reached, the Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, who is also the Socialist Party (PSOE) candidate for the regional elections in Andalusia, will have to explain it publicly. However, the person behind the scenes, negotiating on a daily basis for the Spanish state, is not Montero herself, but her right-hand man: the Secretary of State for Finance, Jesús Gascón Catalán. He is the one who has the details of all the financing models on the table; he is the one who understands the numbers and the... excellent and sits down face-to-face with the negotiators from the PSC and Esquerra.

Gascón has always been closely linked to the Treasury. A few years after graduating in law from the University of Zaragoza, he began working as a tax inspector. Later, during Zapatero's second term, he was the ministry's Director of Taxes, and with Pedro Sánchez's arrival at La Moncloa in 2018, he became Director General of the Spanish Tax Agency. He held this position until June 2022, when he was appointed Secretary of State for Finance, a position he currently holds.

"He's one of us," say sources close to him, who have seen him moving around the ministry for years. This trajectory has allowed him to earn the respect of everyone. Not only from Minister María Jesús Montero, both technically and politically, but also from the civil servants themselves. In fact, we recently saw him argue that it is necessary to rethink the regional financing model at the annual meeting organized by tax inspectors, who didn't hesitate to assert that the system the PSOE and ERC are negotiating will "undermine the pillars" of the Spanish tax system.

The key to this respect is also because, in general, tax officials and the Tax Agency don't take kindly to outsiders taking over their leadership due to their corporatist nature. Gascón is considered a "fun" and "very pragmatic" man, according to a source who knows him well and works with him. "He always looks for solutions to everything," the source adds. Now he faces the challenge of solving the puzzle of the financing model for Catalonia, which should be unique according to the agreement between ERC and the PSC to invest Salvador Illa as Prime Minister. This issue will not be on the agenda at Monday's Fiscal and Financial Policy Council meeting because a final agreement has not yet been reached.