The president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, defended yesterday in front of an economic audience his unique financing proposal for Catalonia, a model, similar to the Basque concert, which proposes that the Generalitat collect and manage all the taxes paid by Catalans and transfer part of the resources to the State. The president emphasized that putting an end to the fiscal deficit, which he estimated at 22,000 million euros, is “an obligation”, and not a privilege.
With less than two months left for the parliamentary elections, and with all the parties already in the pre-campaign, Aragonès responded in this way to the words of the first secretary of the PSC, Salvador Illa, who on Sunday, in an interview with La Vanguardia, distinguished himself from the financing model proposed by ERC from the Government and assured that he would negotiate with the State “with loyalty and without seeking privileges”. “End the fiscal deficit? Put an end to an unfair situation? It’s never a privilege, it’s an obligation, it’s a matter of justice”, stressed Aragonès, in a conference at the College of Economists of Catalonia.
Privilege for some, injustice for others, the central issue is that 52,000 million euros are paid in taxes in Catalonia, of which only 25,000 million return to the citizens. “We defend total fiscal sovereignty”, said Aragonès. In other words, go from collecting 9% of taxes to the total. The model foresees the transfer to the State for the services it provides in Catalonia, in addition to allocating a quota to solidarity with the regions that collect less. “We want a unique model like that of the Basque Country and Navarre, nothing more and nothing less,” he said. The intention is for the proposal to be the basis of a bilateral relationship between the Central Government and the Generalitat. If there is political unity in Catalonia, he said, “the next legislature can be a reality”.
“We are not asking for anything that is not ours,” the president emphasized. He thus referred to the fact that “public services, investment capacity and support for the productive fabric” of Catalonia correspond to the fiscal effort of its citizens.
Along these lines, he emphasized the strength of the Catalan economy and ruled out that the years of the process are “a lost decade”. “The economy is stronger than ten years ago,” he said. For this reason, he criticized the promotion of “a discourse of the supposed decline of the Catalan economy, which is sometimes made from territories that are in competition”.
In the subsequent colloquium, and about the similarity of his proposal for a fiscal pact with that of the Government of Artur Mas in 2012, which failed, he said that the current context is “very different”. “In 2012 there was a systematic knock on the door, now the door is open”, he said, referring to the dialogue with the Government of Pedro Sánchez. “A window of opportunity opens. The central government depends on the votes of Catalonia”, but “the windows are not permanently open”, he warned.
