Carles Puigdemont assures that if the amnesty has been possible, a referendum is possible. The Sanchista maxim of making a virtue out of necessity is a field without doors for the speeches of the independenceists of 12-M that the Spanish Government is now hastening to close. Nothing “divisive” or outside the Constitution is negotiated, repeats the ministerial chorus. And yet, aside from ERC and Junts’ calls for the referendum and tasks to be completed, no one is venturing to guarantee new funding for Catalonia. Neither the candidates, nor Moncloa.
Puigdemont offers himself as the new driving force in the negotiation with the PSOE, Pere Aragonès sees a window of opportunity for his unique financing, and both express comparative grievances with Madrid’s budget execution… Salvador Illa is clings to harmony and legality. And this is how far we have come.
It has been a decade since the current regional funding system has expired, twice as long as the General Council of the Judiciary, and no Executive or party has been red-faced for breaching organic laws and statutes. The autonomous coffers are on the way to agonizing again with the new European rules and the waiting compass is subject to partisan interests and the electoral calendar.
When on November 7, 2007 José Montilla alerted the rooms of the Ritz in Madrid of the growing Catalan disaffection, a businessman replied “that can be fixed with money”. The negotiation of the financing system and, in compliance with the Statute, of the tax consortium between the State and the Generalitat was underway. A date was even set, August 2008, and a first objective: the management of personal income tax. VAT, special taxes and corporate taxes had to come next. The agreement arrived a year late – in July 2009 – and the consortium, endorsed by the Constitutional Court, remains in limbo and is rejected by the Treasury inspectors. Any singularity is unconstitutional, and complying with the Statute, they claim, encourages fraud. There is no third way without a political clash and within the State administration itself.
The Minister of Finance claims that the reform needs the participation of the PP. It’s a false shield. The vote in the regional forum is not binding and the populist barons have become accustomed to demonstrating against it, denouncing inequalities following party discipline, lowering taxes Esperanza Aguirre-style, and then passing the plate on not lose a single euro thinking about the finances of your community.
Candidate Illa claims that neither ERC nor Junts “have sat at the table” to discuss funding during the years of the process and only he is “in a position to negotiate fair and effective funding”. The independentists did include him in their agreements to invest Pedro Sánchez. ERC agreed with the PSOE on a bilateral commission to obtain “adequate funding” taking into account “the singularities” of Catalan self-government: police, judicial bodies, prisons… And Junts left in writing that it aspires to a modification of the law that includes the transfer of 100% of the taxes paid in Catalonia. The election date has adjusted the speeches. Aragonès returns to the fiscal pact of Artur Mas of 2012 and Puigdemont, to his 2017.
Diagnostics about the system collects dust in the drawers. It is “unfair” and “not very transparent”, according to the experts, it alters Catalonia’s position in the per capita funding ranking, it does not take into account the population, nor the differential cost, nor the population at risk of exclusion, nor the effort fiscal… Neither complies with the Statute.
What needs to be seen is the room for maneuver of a central Government dependent on Junts and ERC depending on the electoral result in Catalonia. With the PSC in the Generalitat together with ERC, Montilla stood up: “José Luis, the Catalan socialists love you very much, but we love Catalonia even more”. It caused a crisis with the government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. Moncloa claimed “loyalty” to Montilla. “What Catalonia is asking for is fair and necessary. We cannot suffocate the country”, he answered them.
