L'Informe Fènix presented this month, which warns of the impoverishment of Catalans due to our way of growing (and which confirms that our growth style is now a kind of malignant tumor), must henceforth form the basis of all political, social, civic or business action. It is a serious, grave, urgent, truth-filled wake-up call, because we are all feeling it on our skin and we don't need much proof (even though until now no one had given us the diagnosis and prognosis). The decline is totally perceptible, uncontainable, both in the political and social spheres and, therefore, inevitably, this ends up having its economic effects. We have lost our drive, partly for external reasons, but also for internal reasons and our own renunciations (or neglects), and the result is that Catalonia now seems to be unable to count on either an efficient ruling class or a business fabric that reaches where the government cannot. Until now, one thing had always compensated for the other. Now, on the other hand, the ground is barren, the landscape is a dry meadow with a cow squeezed to the point of hemorrhage, and, in the spiritual aspect, the demoralization is as general and clamorous as it is apparently inconsolable. Distributing blame is necessary, yes, but above all it will be necessary to distribute blame from now on, and specifically towards those who do not react.

Prepared by a group of renowned economists, the Fènix Report is undoubtedly a relevant contribution to public discourse. Those who shape—and we shape—opinion in the media often attribute a large part of the problems we have as a society to something called the economic model, and not infrequently we write or say that a change, or changes, in this model is necessary. Well, the Fènix Report presents a sound, rigorous, and straightforward exploration and diagnosis of the economic model in force in Catalonia during the first quarter of the 21st century. From 2000 to 2025, Catalonia has only lost sheets (GDP points) with each wash, meaning: in comparisons with regions in Europe, or America, with which Catalonia traditionally used to compete or be reflected, and which allowed for complacent or triumphalist expressions of the type “Catalonia, the Bavaria of Southern Europe” or “Catalonia, the European Massachusetts”. This kind of effusion has long since gone out of style, and in its place a chorus of resentful and phantom voices is heard preaching nationalist retreats or, directly, hate speech directed very especially against immigration. Indeed, the migratory flows that have arrived in Catalonia have only grown during these twenty-five years, and have led to a profound demographic transformation, summarized in the transition from Catalonia of six million to that of eight million inhabitants (the Fènix Report incorporates the forecast of ten million by 2050). It is no coincidence that, from the year 2000 until now, Catalonia, and especially Barcelona, has made its economy increasingly dependent on mass tourism and real estate speculation, two phenomena closely linked, often in the form of cause and effect. In these aspects, it can be said that Catalonia —especially Barcelona— has become Balearized, given that the Balearic Islands are, unfortunately, a benchmark in this economic model focused on low-productivity activities, unskilled labor, and low wages, on which the Fènix focuses. And it is true, as its authors indicate, that workers with excessively low wages do not contribute enough to cover the services they will use throughout their lives, thus “contributing” to the deterioration of the economic fabric and the impoverishment of the country as a whole.

Let's think for a moment about the work behind the Phoenix Report, published this May. Six economists of undisputed prestige —Xavier Cuadras Morató, Jordi Galí, Modest Guinjoan, Guillem López Casasnovas, Miquel Puig and Jaume Ventura, coordinated by Xavier Roig— have had to agree on more than one hundred and twenty pages of analysis, accept external arguments, renounce their own personal positions, and put their academic and social capital at stake to achieve a greater good: to awaken a country. To hold it up to the mirror. To proclaim, with data and rigor, that the emperor has no clothes. And the king is naked because while Catalonia's GDP has grown above the European average in the last 25 years, GDP per capita has fallen 12 percentage points compared to our European partners. A quarter of a century ago we were six points above the European average. Today we are six points below. We have created wealth, yes. But we have distributed it among more and more people and in a worse and worse way. This is where we need to stop and think. Because there is a deep confusion, whether interested or naive, about what distributing wealth means. The State tends to understand distribution as providing more services to those who cannot afford them. And it is true that in an advanced society collective solidarity reaches where the individual cannot reach alone. But there is no better distribution of wealth than increasing people's wages. That fewer and fewer people have to depend on public resources to have a full life. That every worker can feel responsible for their own future and have control over their life. Jarvis Cocker, from Pulp, sang it with bitter irony in "Common People": "how does it feel to live your life without no meaning or control?" It is a song about the romanticization of poverty. Today it could be the soundtrack to a growing part of Catalan society. 

In recent months, I have been part of a team of economists who have been reflecting on the evolution of the Catalan economy and its prospects. We have focused on the concept of “highly subsidized” wages. We consider those to be wages that do not allow the worker to contribute – via taxes and social contributions – to pay even for those public services that they will directly consume throughout their lives (without including the many they will indirectly enjoy). We have calculated that this limit was, in 2023, at €27,500 gross, which in 2026 would be equivalent to €30,000.Since society has to supplement the cost of the services that these workers benefit from, it is deduced on the one hand that the employer pays them below their cost, and, on the other hand, that the final customer benefits from a hidden subsidy, since they do not pay the full cost of the service they receive.All societies that enjoy a progressive tax system and a strong welfare state have many workers who earn below the level we have defined. This is not, therefore, the issue. What has interested us is the existence of sectors that meet three conditions.The first, that not only employ “highly subsidized” workers, but that the average salary is below that level, because it is as if all their workers were. In this case we are talking about “highly subsidized” activities and we consider that society should consider whether they should exist or whether they should pay their workers so little.The second, that they be very job creators. The primary sector, for example, is an "highly subsidized" sector, but it is not creating jobs, and, moreover, it has the additional social value of combating the desertification of the territory.The third, that the ultimate beneficiary is a non-resident, because this means that the subsidy goes from taxpayers to people who are not, so that the country is impoverished through exports that, in the end, are sold below their cost.Unfortunately, a large part of Catalan growth in the last 25 years has been driven by economic activities that meet these three characteristics. This prominence explains why the enormous growth of the Catalan economy in the last 25 years – not exceptional within the Spanish framework, but yes within the European one – has not translated into higher well-being for the average Catalan, but rather, on the one hand, into migratory flows that pressure the housing market and saturate public services, and, on the other, into wage stagnation.

The first oil crisis, that of 1973-1974, ended up generating, especially in the developed Western world, a situation that was defined as "stagflation", that is, the simultaneity of economic stagnation and inflation. The world had come from a place where the two concepts were quite opposed, given that stagnation was fought with expansionary policies that were inflationary and inflation could be reduced with stabilization policies (i.e., stagnation or contraction). The repetition of expansionary policies simultaneous to the existence of strong supply inflation —the increase in the price of oil was due to unforeseen extra-economic causes—, ended up meaning that economic stimulus policies were useless. Only the same stagnation that was sought to be combated was achieved, but with the addition of inflation.

El Prat Airport opened the 21st century with nearly 20 million passengers, and last year reached 55 million, consolidating its position as one of the largest in Europe. This milestone was possible thanks to the expansion approved in 1999 and carried out throughout the first decade of the century, which included the construction of the sea runway and Terminal 1. Now, the airport has reached its maximum capacity, and the government of President Salvador Illa has just approved the expansion proposed by Aena for six years.

In economics, as in any other field, constantly repeated clichés can become commonplaces that end up shaping majority public opinion. Regarding the recurring issue of the Catalan production model, the idea has taken hold that the country is relentlessly deindustrializing, turning into a "tourist factory," which would largely explain the slowdown in productivity and the stagnation of the Catalan standard of living. Like all persistent clichés, this view of things has some truth, although the reality is much more nuanced. A particularly damaging consequence of clichés is that they divert attention from other facts that are equally or more relevant. In this case, they hide some underlying trends that are less visible, but no less significant.