It may be more for convenience than for love, but the marriage that Pedro Sánchez has signed with ERC is for the entire legislature. So much so that the alliance is about to lay the foundations for the new financing system for Catalonia, one of the great projects that Republicans have started by force of supporting up to two socialist governments, that of Sánchez himself and that of Salvador Illa in the Generalitat.
The president of the Government, which passes one of the most hurried moments of his political life due to the depth of the crater that has opened the case of the Cerdán-Aálos-Koldo triangle, is willing to accelerate in the financing folder, with which the socialists understand that they give continuity to the legislature.
Solving the issue of financing is a true sudoku. On the one hand, it requires fulfilling an agreement signed with ERC and, on the other, to agree on a majority in Congress while lifting the least possible blisters with the rest of the communities.
The complexity of the negotiation has been demonstrated again this Saturday. The president of ERC, Oriol Junqueras, wanted to mark his own profile and has warned the socialists that to close the whole support of ERC to the new model, “concretions” will be necessary at the meeting between Monday executives, while noting that the Catalan hacienda cannot be “subordinated” to the state and has claimed its “armor”.
From the government they understand that the time has come to launch since, paradoxically, it can contribute stability. It is, to begin with, the way of strengthening its relations with a key partner in Madrid and Barcelona such as ERC, but also because the presidency of Illa, which has made the new fiscal system one of the bases of its mandate.
The details that are known about the new model, advanced by eldiario.es, are marked as a objective that the Agència Tributària de Catalunya (ATC) is able to inspect, collect and manage all taxes, but propose a first phase very focused on the collection of some important taxes, such as IRPF, starting next year.
To achieve this, the agreed itinerary is a modification of several laws, including the financing of the communities (LOFCA), which is organic, which requires an absolute majority.
This legal modification will be a first fire test for the project, since it must gather a consensus in Congress that has never been displayed to date. The only votes that, a priori, are guaranteed are those of the PSOE, ERC and the two Basque groups. From here, everything is doubts.
Adding should not be a problem for the reform of the LOFCA, although it is known that in the formation they coexist sensibilities favorable to the model, such as the commons, with others less
There are more doubts with Compromís, whose deputy àgueda Micó has just left the group of adding. At the time the formation showed many misgivings before the Catalan pact and warned that it should also solve the Valencian issue, a territory very punished by the current financing system. But, to the extent that the model imposed in Catalonia could be generalizable, the Compromís part would not be an insurmountable barrier.
Podemos is also a formation that has shown distances to the plans of the “singular” financing of Catalonia, despite what is also a training that advocates advancing in multinationality and, specifically, solving the question of the infinance of the Generalitat.
And together? The question is asked in Moncloa but also on Calàbria Street, headquarters of ERC, where they already have that Carles Puigdemont will try to throw as much water as they can come to the wine from the Treasury, but do not believe that they can get to boycott the law in Congress.
Although with disparate names and language, in the agreement of the PSOE with Junts for the investiture of Sánchez there is an intention very similar to what is now standing. “Junts will propose a modification of the LOFCA that establishes a clause of exception of Catalonia that recognizes the uniqueness in which the institutional system of the Generalitat is organized and that facilitates the assignment of 100% of all the taxes paid in Catalonia,” said that November 2023 text.
Singular, ¿y plural?
The agreed financing model between ERC and the PSC turns around the way in which the common regime communities had been financed so far (that is, all but Euskadi and Navarra). Until now the state raised, obtained the funds and distributed them among the communities, following a series of parameters.
Now, in the case of Catalonia, it will be the Generalitat herself who collects the tax part that touches her. And, these distribution parameters must also be modified to guarantee, among other things, ordinality, that is, after transfers no territory loses positions in financing per inhabitant.
This model has been called “singular” under the idea that the uniqueness of Catalonia was guaranteed, but in the Treasury they are sure that it is a generalizable model for all the communities that wish. An aspect against which ERC will not fight.
The question of extending the Catalan model to other communities is a letter that the government has already begun to play against friends and enemies. This same Friday the Minister of Finance and candidate of the PSOE to the presidency of the Junta de Andalucía, María Jesús Montero, challenged her opponent, the Andalusian president, Juan Moreno Bonilla, to claim for her community the same model that they foresee for Catalonia.
“We will federalize more competencies in tax management or in the field of public finance for all autonomous communities that want to develop their statutes of autonomy,” Montero said.
A long processing and that ties to independence
Although it will be the first of others that are yet to come if the Catalan financing model ends up completely, the processing of this first legal modification will not be sewing and singing.
To start, it will not start until September and could spend months until it arrives in the port. The limit is, obviously, the beginning of the 2026 rental campaign, which usually begins at the end of March or early April.
There is a seven -month margin, therefore, during which it should also be advanced in many other issues, the most important of all the resistance of the ATC, both personal and material. But, in addition, it should agree on the percentage participation of the State in taxes, which will be the ideal way for the Generalitat to directly transfer its financing to the central estate, as well as calculate and agree on the solidarity quota between territories.
A journey and that links Sanchez to the independentists for months, even years, if they want to bring to fruition that, discarded independence, it is the most ambitious project that has launched Catalan in several decades.
For ERC, the singular financing is worth a rarely happy marriage with Sánchez. For the president, to place again in the field of politics and the search for majorities, however complicated it is, and brought to partners who cannot abandon him, such as ERC, already important support such as Salvador Illa, supposes, at least, to put land in between with some corruption scandals that have threatened to demolish their government.
