Forming a government will take time. But I want to believe – call me delusional – that, faced with a critical decision (title of a recent book by Carles Canals), the current leaders of historical Catalanism will know how to appreciate the importance of breaking the shock wave of the extreme right in Europe, and the global significance to be the protagonist I anticipate, therefore, agreement.
Many issues will be discussed in the negotiation. Putting an end to the repressive consequences of 1-O or the reluctance about Catalan will be two of the most important. But today I will comment on the economic ones. I would strongly recommend that the negotiations on economic issues have the property of favoring all the autonomies.
In particular, that, on the side of tax revenues, there should be an impact, above all, on its distribution between the central administration and the autonomies. Catalonia will not win by calling for a new funding model that immediately raises the suspicion that we want more in a zero-sum game. And if we do not change the distribution between central administration and autonomies, it will be effectively zero sum. The impasse will continue and we will not advance.
Four examples of measurements with the desirable property:
1) The debt of the autonomies with the FLA –that is, with the State– is a consequence of the historical deficiencies of the financing system. It would make all the sense in the world that, as Valencia has persistently claimed, the central administration would assume this debt. It is a debt that is already included in the total of the Kingdom of Spain, that is, it would remain unchanged. Only the distribution of debt service would be modified.
2) If it arises, Aena’s resistance to any regional participation in its management will be Numantine. However, the State owns 51% of Aena’s shares and nothing prevents, for example, half of these shares from being transferred to the autonomous regions with a reasonable distribution criteria and taking into account aeronautical realities. The market value of Aena (a publicly traded company) is around 22,000 million euros, that is, it would be a transfer of assets of around 5,500 million. It is a significant amount, but the implicit message would be even more so: that the interests of the territories that feed the airports have to be represented at the highest levels of the company.
3) In line with the above, it would be good to articulate initiatives and procedures to transfer the State’s physical assets to the autonomous regions. There are scandalous situations, such as hospitals with transferred management, such as Vall d’Hebron, continue to be owned by the State -via the Social Security Treasury-, and that includes all the large investments that the autonomous regions have accumulated over the years.
4) The sum of the non-executions of the infrastructure items of the general State budgets in, let’s say, the last decade is a historical debt perfectly claimable by the autonomies. I would add that the methodology of management assignments to the Generalitat that is used this year to ensure the execution of the state budget should be a systematic practice. Perhaps not all the autonomies will want it, but the fact that Catalonia wants it does not hurt anyone.
It should be borne in mind that the Community of Madrid is special because it has two faces: that of the regional powers and that derived from the presence of the central Administration. The recommendation not to go to zero-sum conflicts applies to the first but not to the second: all initiatives that lead to the decentralization of the State are good and indicated.
Let’s take Culture. In the 2023 state budget, it receives about 1,500 million euros. A superficial territorialization attributes more than 25% to Madrid. Iceta’s management has improved the previous situation, but I think it would be time to establish, on the one hand, that the territorialization of Culture spending must be oriented towards proportionality between territories, as would be appropriate if we considered it a social policy.
And on the other hand, that the brutal patrimonial asymmetry is gradually being balanced: there is no reason why all the Inaem companies have to reside in Madrid or why the mobile artistic patrimony, also the first category, is not present throughout the Spanish territory .
In summary: from Catalonia let us encourage Spain to become more German, that is, more multicentric.
