The collapse of our very modest welfare state is a sadly recurring observation in the last fifteen years. The new report from the Association of Directors and Managers kicking the board is the child in the story telling the naive truth that the king rides naked.
Madrid and Catalonia are the communities that spend the least on social policies per inhabitant, according to this analysis. The Catalan case blushes: in 2022, it had not recovered the social spending it had in 2009, before the financial crisis.
These figures should blow up the hornet’s nest, but whatever. Here and there they are to something else. While the old die waiting for dependency help. While poverty permeates more and more social strata, especially children and young people. While public health drags its feet from its base, primary care. While education sees structural problems become chronic… While all this is happening, here and there because of the amnesty thing.
Against or in favor of the amnesty, calls are made to fill places. Be that of Philip II of Madrid. Be it Plaza España in Barcelona. Be it from the tribunes of parliaments. How deluded some ordinary citizens were to believe that the lesson of Covid would serve to make political managers open their eyes to real problems, and not just to their own and those of their parties. Nothing like a comparison in investment by region to see confirmed that the true territorial inequality is social, not identity.
It is now relevant to remember that last October, at the Barcelona Tribuna forum, the Minister of Social Rights, Carles Campuzano, was asked why Catalonia alone had 39% of the waiting limbo – the sum of people valued as dependents who have the benefit recognized, but are not being given it, and those who are still pending assessment – ??throughout the national territory. Then the councilor warned that we must govern for all Catalans and not just 51%, while he cried out against “ineffective policies.” AND? Well, the latest news in social investments from the Government of the Generalitat have been the 8 million in reusable cups and pads, and another 50 in a universal school voucher of 100 euros for primary school students (in 2024, also for ESO students) .
Governments will argue that social policies take up more than half of the total budget, that accounting must take into account that there is a larger population and that bureaucracy weighs down public aid. But what they won’t say is that none of that is enough. Nobody wants to see that the king is naked or that there is more and more inequality and more unrest.
