Toni Bolaño, 18 August 2024
Solidarity or ‘la sopa boba’ (the stupid soup)
The laboratory of ideas has been set in motion in Madrid. As always, the first conclusion to be reached is that Catalonia is more than well financed. There are two arguments supporting this thesis: that investment per inhabitant is above average (1.7% above the national average, 2.1% above Madrid); and that Catalonia is the autonomous community with the highest pension bill. This leads to the conclusion ‘how well Catalonia is treated’. If things get ugly, the public’s joker is pulled: ‘the problem is that the Catalan government has managed resources badly’. And an effective support: the unwavering defence of equality among Spaniards.
An equality that is trivial. Catalonia is the last community in the execution of public investment in 2023. Only 45% of the total, far below Castilla-La Mancha, for example, where its president has stood up against the new financing system. It is logical for Emiliano García Page to do so, because he is running out of money and will not accept that they take away his wallet. Another thing in favour of unity. Irony, it is understood. The weight of public salaries in Catalonia is 12.9%, while those who take the cat out of the water in funding, its structure is infinitely higher: Extremadura with 40.5%, Castilla-La Mancha with 31.7%, Andalusia with 29% and even Madrid with 17.5%. . And the cherry on top of equality: Catalonia contributed 2,168 million euros more than it received.
Let’s look at pensions. Catalonia pays out 1,778 million euros in pensions. This is the highest expenditure in Spain, but the average pension is not the highest by far. The number of pensioners is due to the important weight of Catalan industry with a large workforce. Now the Catalan average is 1,304 euros per pensioner, less than the Basques with 1,551, Madrid 1,458, Navarre 1,438, Aragon 1,328, Cantabria 1,325, Asturias 1,465 or the Baratarian Isles of Valladolid with 1,377 or Guadalajara 1,328.To say that pensions are now paid with taxes that belong to everyone is as much as saying that for years pensions were paid thanks to Catalonia.
The data do not matter, what matters is to reach the conclusion that the Catalans are profiteers. That they pay little and want to collect more with the complicity of a government that sells out Spain, that breaks Spain and that legalises the Catalonia that steals from us.This nonsense is gaining momentum, because it will be the spur against the PSOE, fuelled by Catalanophobia, to maintain the sacred unity of the Spanish people and to perpetuate a funding model that has been hurting Catalonia for years. At two billion euros per year, you do the maths. With what has been lost in the last ten years, surely any government of any colour would put social, health and education services in order.
But in Spain they are not even willing to consider a change of paradigm that does not always punish the same people. The worst thing is that neither is the PSOE. They do not realise that, apart from being left-wing or right-wing, the most important thing is the model of the state. Some in the PSOE have not realised that the Catalan Tax Agency is constitutional. It was one of the few things that remained after it was cut down first by Luis María López Guerra and then by the court itself. And the worst thing is that staying as they are suits them like a glove because it covers their shame, the things they don’t do to be more dynamic and which they don’t do because the revenue already comes from elsewhere. For example, Asturias has looked for new models of growth after the closure of its mines, or it is already paying the highest pensions in Spain to the workers who were once the most subsidised sector in the whole country. Ufff… if the miners had been Catalan…
The model agreed between ERC and PSC will be complex to apply, but it marks a new path in which solidarity is no longer called ‘la sopa boba’. Where equality is not at the cost of inequality for some and where social justice does not leave economic justice aside, because without economy there is no progress and there is no revenue. Waiting for others to pay is unethical, gentlemen.
https://cronicaglobal.elespanol.com/pensamiento/20240818/solidaridad-la-sopa-boba/879042091_13.html
FEDEA assures that Catalonia will receive 13.2 billion from the common fund due to PSC-ERC agreement
Editorial, 7 August 20244
Image of Ángel De la Fuente, executive director of FEDEA Europa Press
A report by the foundation points out that the Generalitat would raise the homogeneous financing between 25% and 50%.
The Foundation for Applied Economics Studies (FEDEA) claims that with the recent agreement between PSC and ERC. Catalonia will receive up to 13,200 million euros from the common fund of the State. In a report, the organisation directed by Ángel De la Fuente, points out that the Generalitat will increase its homogeneous financing by between 25% and 50%. The document also describes that if the Government extends the agreement to other territories without loss of funding, the State will have to adjust its spending or reduce the benefits of its competences.
De la Fuente recalls that one of Catalonia’s traditional demands is to eliminate the autonomous community’s fiscal deficit with the State, or rather the estimate of this magnitude that the Generalitat calculates every year using the questionable procedure of monetary flow.
A 22 billion euro gap
According to the Generalitat’s latest estimate, the gap between what the community contributes and what it receives from the central government is around 22,000 million euros, almost 10% of GDP, an estimate that ‘is very biased upwards’, says the expert. According to FEDEA, for the last year in which the comparison is possible (2014), the maximum deficit estimated by the Generalitat was 65% higher than that calculated by the Ministry of Finance with a burden-benefit approach, which is the closest thing to an internationally accepted methodological standard that exists in this literature.
The Foundation also specifies that the problems would worsen considerably if the new system were extended to Madrid and the Balearic Islands, the other two regions that are net contributors to the regional funding model.
The state would lose an additional 37.5 billion euros in tax revenue, and if the corresponding quotas were negotiated with criteria similar to those that the Catalan nationalists want to impose, the state’s net revenue would plummet. All in all, Fedea calculates that extending the measure to the rest of the common regime communities under the same conditions would cost between 31,000 and 62,000 million euros more.
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