The Generalitat has announced that it has awarded 292.75 million euros of new long-term debt to three financial entities at an average rate of "very advantageous" 2.331% and lower than the maximum initially set. The Department of Economy and Finance has specified that the entities' offers tripled the amount requested by the Government and the final cost of the loans is between 5 and 10 basis points above the Treasury, when the limit set was Treasury +20 basis points (T+0.20%). This operation marks the Generalitat de Catalunya's return to the financial markets for the first time in 14 years after more than a decade relying almost exclusively on the Autonomous Liquidity Fund (FLA) to finance the deficit.

Catalonia continues to receive a third of all the funds the central government has allocated to the autonomous communities since 2012 through extraordinary mechanisms such as the Regional Liquidity Fund (FLA). According to data from the Ministry of Finance, from that year until the allocation for the first quarter of 2026, the total amount for Catalonia, through various extraordinary instruments, has reached €160,722.3 million. This represents 32.8% of the more than €488 billion allocated to the territories under the common regime, which are used to cover the deficit and pay outstanding bills and debts. However, the ranking changes when the estimate is calculated in euros per capita. In this case, the Valencian Community leads the way, with €22,461 per person, given the increase in resources received by this autonomous community to mitigate the effects of the October 2024 storm, compared to €19,676.4 in Catalonia. Two issues currently on the table, agreed upon between the Spanish government and the ERC (Republican Left of Catalonia), directly affect regional finances, despite the polarization and difficulties in securing parliamentary support. One is the forgiveness of approximately €17 billion of Catalonia's FLA (Regional Liquidity Fund) debt, out of a total of more than €83 billion for all the autonomous communities, representing around 24% of the current regional debt. This was approved by the Council of Ministers and is pending ratification by the Congress of Deputies. The other essential element is the new financing model, which faces the challenge of providing specific provisions for Catalonia, but also for the other regions. The upcoming meeting scheduled for this Thursday between the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, and the leader of Esquerra Republicana, Oriol Junqueras, must implement it and address issues such as maintaining the principle of ordinality; that is, ensuring that once resources are contributed to the common fund, Catalonia does not fall too far behind other territories. According to the settlements of the current financing model, which expired in 2014, Catalonia is the third largest contributor to the system, behind Madrid and the Balearic Islands, but it falls to tenth place when the distribution is based on state spending and investment, and drops even further when the price differential is taken into account.

Objective achieved. Major banks are once again financing the Catalan government thirteen years later. CaixaBank, Banco Sabadell, BBVA, and Santander are four of the six financial institutions that have enabled the government to successfully complete the partial refinancing process of the regional liquidity fund (FLA) for 2023 at a lower interest rate than the current one, amounting to €3.5 billion. As a result of this operation, the Catalan government will save €127.6 million in interest over eleven years, until 2035, according to calculations by the Ministry of Economy. This is the first operation with the private financial sector to finance long-term debt since 2012, the year in which the markets for the regional governments were closed and the instruments to provide them with liquidity and resources to pay suppliers were created. BBVA has signed an agreement to refinance €1 billion, and Santander, around €700 million. CaixaBank and Sabadell have not disclosed the amounts provided.

The Valencian Government's coffers are empty. The causes of this crunch include structural issues, such as underfunding in the regional government, but also temporary ones, such as the extra spending on the DANA (National Action Plan for the Development of the Autonomous Community of Valencia), the tax cuts by the PP and Vox, and the absence of the State's extraordinary regional liquidity fund (FLA). A combination that has meant that, twelve years after the economic crisis that began in 2008 and its austerity policies, cuts and liquidity problems have returned to the Valencian Community.

Nearly 3 out of every 10 euros that the State has allocated to the autonomous regions since 2012 through mechanisms such as the regional liquidity fund (FLA) have gone to Catalonia. According to data from the Ministry of Finance, since that year to date, 145.365 billion euros have reached Catalonia through various extraordinary instruments, out of a total of 431.289 billion euros allocated to the territories under the common regime, which cover the deficit and pay bills and ten.

The Catalan government will refinance €3.5 billion of its debt with private banks. This will be the first time in 13 years that the Catalan government has turned to the private sector for financing, taking advantage of the drop in interest rates. This will allow for financial cost savings that the government estimates at around €24 million. In 2023, the average cost of resources obtained through the regional liquidity fund (FLA)) was 3.497%, and last year it had already dropped to 3.159%. The Department of Economy states that currently, the Spanish Treasury interest rate differential with respect to the FLA ranges between 60 and 75 basis points.

The cancellation of €17.104 billion in FLA debt is one of the five economic commitments included in the agreement for Pedro Sánchez's investiture between ERC and the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) in November 2023. The other four are: the transfer of the commuter rail network, with the necessary resources to improve this key infrastructure; a permanent fund of €150 million annually for scientific research projects in Catalonia; a €1.6 billion allocation until 2030 to expand the Mossos d'Esquadra force and create new judicial bodies; and the creation of a consortium to guarantee the execution of state investments in Catalonia.

These are hot days as far as Cercanías and also Media Distancia are concerned. But there is no immediate remedy for this, because it is not a consequence of stupidity, but of a model of national construction in Spain expressed with the infrastructure policy. A model established for centuries, which we discussed at length in Spain, capital ParisThis model was challenged by the independence process, which was dismantled by the incompetence of the protagonists in the autonomous institutions and the determination of those who opposed it from the Spanish institutions. In the Process, not in the model. But shedding tears over milk already spilled is only an exercise in melancholy that helps neither the person who does it nor the person who receives it. The infrastructures will remain as they are, because politics will continue to be the same; those who decide know that all this mess has not had and will not have electoral sanction. Identity weighs more. And in a couple of decades it will be talked about again, if at all.

Catalanism aims to create something similar to a state in Catalonia (a "state body") without having the strength to impose itself on the Spanish state. This condemns it to face the same dilemma over and over again when faced with any political pact that represents the assumption of a responsibility proper to a state: whether to consider it a step in the right direction or a betrayal of the ultimate ideal.

The PP Finance Ministers have put on a lamentable show this Wednesday at the Fiscal and Financial Policy Council: they have stood up from their chairs and have refused to participate in the debate and vote on an initiative, the partial forgiveness of debt, which benefits all the autonomous communities. The reason is not the measure itself, but rather that it is a proposal included in the investiture pact of Pedro Sánchez signed between ERC and PSOE. The message they launched after leaving the room was that they do not want to pick up "the springs of Sánchez's pact with the independentists", thus returning to the old anti-Catalan rhetoric of the PP. On this point it is necessary to make some considerations.

The PSOE, with Esquerra, had agreed to forgive, in Catalonia, a part of the autonomous liquidity fund, the FLA, which is one of the things that had us complaining –I think rightly– at the time when we were asking for independence. It is about "forgiving" part of a credit that the State granted to the autonomous regions because, at least in the Catalan case, it does not pay the money in arrears that it owes. It is perverse, yes.

Is it good news that the Generalitat does not have to repay 17,104 million euros of debt to the State? Yes, it is. For obvious reasons. Is it a "lift of the shirt", as Junts says? No, it is not, the Generalitat will have 17,104 million euros. Is it coffee for everyone? Yes, as always. Everything that Catalonia negotiates is for the others, too. That is to say, it is not a joke as long as we accept that all the autonomous governments benefit from the reduction of the debt (except those of the Basque Country and Navarre, which have their own financing system), and as long as we understand that the debt does not disappear but is transformed, that is to say, that it is one thing for the Generalitat to have more money and another thing for the Generalitat to have more money.

The Fiscal and Financial Policy Council (CPFF) will debate this Wednesday the proposal of Pedro Sánchez's government to forgive part of the communities' debt. The communities governed by the PP, with Isabel Díaz Ayuso, president of Madrid, at the head, have come out in force saying that it is a pact between the Spanish government and the Catalan independentists to benefit Catalonia. But is Catalonia the community that benefits the most? Several aspects indicate that this is not the case. In fact, overall the communities governed by the PP are the ones that benefit.

Together he is not at all satisfied with the forgiveness of the FLA debt in the terms in which it was announced. The spokesperson for the Catalan regional government in the Parliament, Mònica Sales, has assured in a press conference that "experience shows us that it could be another joke." Thus, she has downplayed the importance of this forgiveness of 17.104 million euros of the Generalitat's debt with the autonomous liquidity fund created during the crisis and has criticized its formulation. "All the communities will benefit, the proportional part that the Catalans will pay is the same," she said, and she has emphasized that this "does not fix the financing problem nor resolve the fiscal deficit," of 20,000 million euros a year. Sales herself was asked about what her party will do when the proposal for forgiveness reaches Congress, but she avoided commenting because she said that the decision corresponds to the Madrid group.

The president of the Balearic Government, Marga Prohens, was quick to reject the 1.741 million euros that would correspond to the Balearic Islands for the debt forgiveness of the autonomous liquidity fund (FLA) that the Spanish government has agreed with ERC. The reason given by Prohens to justify the rejection of money that belongs to the citizens of the Balearic Islands is that the proposed figures presented by Minister Montero respond to a debt forgiveness "negotiated by and for Catalonia". And as an added argument, she exhibits an alleged comparative grievance: according to the calculations presented by the Spanish government, the Balearic Islands would be "forgiven" 1,413.4 euros per inhabitant, while in Catalonia it would be 2,133.5 euros per inhabitant.

The president of the Balearic Government, Marga Prohens, was quick to reject the 1.741 million euros that would correspond to the Balearic Islands for the debt forgiveness of the Autonomous Liquidity Fund (FLA) that the Spanish government has agreed with ERC. The reason given by Prohens to justify the rejection of money that belongs to the citizens of the Balearic Islands is that the proposed figures presented by Minister Montero respond to a debt forgiveness "negotiated by and for Catalonia". And as an added argument, she exhibits an alleged comparative grievance: according to the calculations presented by the Spanish government, the Balearic Islands would be "forgiven" 1,413.4 euros per inhabitant, while in Catalonia it would be 2,133.5 euros per inhabitant.

Politics has become a competition in which at the end of each day the points scored by the contenders are counted, and yesterday's scoreboard showed two big winners: Pedro Sánchez and Salvador Illa.

Without failing to emphasize the good news that the Generalitat does not have to return 17,104 million to the State, yesterday was a great farce. In yesterday's episode we heard autonomous communities indignant because they will pay less; the Spanish government turning into generosity what was a pact so that the PSOE could invest Pedro Sánchez, loser of the 2023 elections; the Spanish government putting on the medal of forgiving the Generalitat money that if the Generalitat were well financed would not have had to leave Catalonia, and, above all, we saw again the fat saint christ, the tranquilizer of socialist voters, the mother of all the Spanish political justifications of essential use when the concepts money and Catalonia They appear in the same sentence: "Avoid territorial grievances."

The decision of Forgive 17.1 billion euros of the Generalitat's debt to the State through the FLA This represents the fulfilment of one of the agreements between ERC and the PSOE that allowed the investiture of Pedro Sánchez and also represents a breath of fresh air for the coffers of the Generalitat, since in this way it will save some 1.5 billion euros in interest, according to the calculation made public by Oriol Junqueras. The Ministry of Finance has extended this forgiveness to the rest of the autonomous communities with criteria that, curiously, make Andalusia the most benefited (18.8 billion) and that after Catalonia come the Valencian Community (11.21 billion) and the Community of Madrid (8.644 billion). In this way, María Jesús Montero manages to put the men The PP's regional governments are in a bind, since if they listen to what their president, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, and the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, say, they will vote against it. However, the measure will most likely be approved in Congress and then it will be necessary to see whether these communities accept it or not. Not doing so would be to harm their own citizens for a political reason.

Without failing to emphasize the good news that the Generalitat does not have to return 17,104 million to the StateYesterday's episode was a great farce. In yesterday's episode we heard autonomous communities indignant because they will pay less; the Spanish government turning into generosity what was a pact so that the PSOE could invest Pedro Sánchez, loser of the 2023 elections; the Spanish government taking credit for forgiving the Generalitat money that if the Generalitat were well financed would not have had to leave Catalonia, and, above all, we saw again the fat Holy Christ, the tranquilizer of socialist voters, the mother of all Spanish political justifications that are essential when the concepts of money and Catalonia come up together.