The formation of the government will be prolonged. 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 appreciate the importance of breaking the expansive wave of extreme right in Europe, and the global significance of being a protagonist. So I anticipate agreement.
Many topics will be discussed in the negotiation. Putting an end to the repressive aftermath of 1-O or the reticence about the language will be two important ones. But today I will comment on the economic ones. I would strongly recommend that negotiations on economic issues have the property of favoring all autonomies.
In particular, that on the side of tax revenues, there should be an emphasis on their distribution between the central administration and the autonomous regions. Catalonia will not win by claiming a new funding model that immediately raises the suspicion that we want more in a zero-sum game. And if we don’t change the distribution between Central Administration and autonomous regions, it will effectively be zero sum. The impasse will continue and we will not move forward.
Four examples of measures with the desirable property:
1) The debt of the autonomies to the FLA – that is, to the State – is a consequence of the historical deficiencies of the financing system. It would make all the sense in the world if, as Valencia has persistently claimed, the Central Administration assumed this debt. It is a debt that is already included in the total of the Kingdom of Spain, that is to say, that it would remain unchanged. Only the distribution of debt service would be modified.
2) If it is raised, Aena’s resistance to any autonomous participation in its management will be overwhelming. However, the State is the owner of 51% of Aena’s shares and nothing prevents, for example, half of these shares from being transferred to the autonomies with a distribution criterion that would be reasonable and take into account aeronautical realities . The market value of Aena – a company that trades on the stock exchange – is around 22,000 million euros, that is to say, it would be a transfer of assets of the order of 5,500 million. It is a significant amount, but the implicit message would be even more important: that the interests of the territories that feed the airports must 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 heritage to the autonomies. There are scandalous situations, such as the fact that hospitals with transferred management, such as the Vall d’Hebron, continue to be owned by the State – via the Social Security Treasury -, and this includes all the large investments that over the years they have accumulated the autonomies.
4) The sum of the non-implementation of the infrastructure items of the State’s general budgets in, let’s say, the last decade is a historical debt perfectly claimable by all the autonomous regions. I would add that the methodology of management assignments to the Generalitat that is being used this year to ensure that the state budget is executed should become a systematic practice. Maybe not all the autonomies will want it, but if Catalonia wants it, it doesn’t hurt anyone.
It is worth bearing in mind that the Community of Madrid is special because it has two sides: that of the autonomous powers and that derived from the presence of the central administration. The recommendation not to engage in zero-sum conflicts applies to the first, but not to the second: all initiatives that lead to the deconcentration of the State are good and appropriate.
We take Culture: In the 2023 State budget, it receives around 1.5 billion euros. A shallow territorialization attributes more than 25% to Madrid. The management of Iceta has improved the previous situation, but I think it would be time to establish, on the one hand, that the territorialization of Culture expenditure 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 gradually balances out: there is no reason why all the Inaem companies have to reside in Madrid or why mobile artistic heritage, even the first category, should not be present everywhere the Spanish territory.
In short: from Catalonia we encourage Spain to become more German, that is to say, more multicentric.
