There are still those who remember my time on the Governing Council of the Bank of Spain and ask me about the collapse of the savings bank system during the crisis, driven by nostalgia and the need for financial repositioning of the Catalan productive economy. Of course, for this reason, some of us would like a new, entirely public banking system, going beyond the current tasks of the Catalan Finance Institute: a public banking system that, for now, I don't quite see coming. In any case, I would like to highlight an interesting recent speech by the Governor of the Bank of Spain, José Luis Escrivá, at the general assembly of the European Association of Cooperative Banks, although he was referring to the cooperative credit sector in Spain.

In these 15 years of the ARA, the Catalan economy, which three lustrums ago had a gross domestic product (GDP) of about 200 billion euros, has today more than 300 billion, more than 50% higher; it has experienced a total restructuring of the financial system, the flight of business headquarters with the referendum of October 1, 2017 and a fall in activity like in the Civil War due to the coronavirus crisis. This period has now ended with Banc Sabadell shareholders' refusal to accept BBVA's takeover bid, which BBVA had already attempted in 2020. But the story of this newspaper, which hit newsstands (there were still quite a few) on November 28, 2012, featuring Mois Noguera, the first Catalan born that year, on the front page, began two months after a general strike against labor reforms under the socialist José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero as Spanish Prime Minister. Following the biggest economic crisis since 1929, recovery was beginning to offer hope, but the world was reeling from the shock of the attacks on the debt of Greece and Ireland, and other countries with high deficits, including Spain.

The president of the La Caixa Foundation and Criteria, Isidre Fainé, has encouraged financial institutions to increase their social investment. During his speech at the World Savings and Retail Banking Institute (WSBI) meeting in Washington, where he is president, he noted that the sector has increased its annual allocation to nearly $4 billion in social initiatives to reduce poverty and foster youth empowerment.

The Catalan financial system is experiencing a new phase that could lead to the loss of the only major bank with its headquarters, Sabadell, which was reclaimed last January after more than seven years in Alicante due to the Process and the referendum. Now, the takeover bid (OPA) for BBVA and the planned subsequent merger are in the hands of the Spanish government. After analyzing the the responses to the unprecedented public consultation called by the executive, The Ministry of Economy has until next Tuesday, the 27th, to submit the file to the Council of Ministers. The Council must then decide whether to object to the merger based on "general interest" criteria, since the free competition criteria were resolved by the National Commission on Markets and Competition (CNMC) in a unanimous ruling on April 30th.