The hornets' nest of cutting taxes has just been stirred up, and in the worst possible way, by the action of the president of the Andalusian autonomous community, Juanma Moreno, in deciding to copy the model used by his counterpart in the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, through the abolition of the wealth tax as well as the inheritance tax. And, moreover, the way he has done it could be described, in sporting jargon, as by going on the offensive: inviting Catalan businesspeople to re-locate their headquarters to the south of Spain. Thus raising a very serious question: is it correct for the autonomous community that receives the most additional assistance based on its negative net balance to practice fiscal dumping? Into the political debate between parties of different ideologies and from different territories has leapt, very clumsily, the Spanish social security and migration minister, José Luis Escrivá, with an argument as simplistic as it is always well received by the Spanish establishment: taxes must be centralized in order to prevent the autonomous communities from competing with each other to lower them.
It is clear that, like it or not, Ayuso's initiative in Madrid to abolish the wealth tax as well as the inheritance tax has had a harmful effect on Catalonia, because, whether many or few, there are companies - and also individuals - that have taken the opportunity to set up residence in Madrid as a consequence. The discourse of the Spanish and Catalan left, that they are giving away tax income to the rich may have a basis in truth, but it also has a point of demagoguery and avoids facing the real problem: are companies and individuals leaving or not? Are there or aren't there more powerful ways for autonomous communities to retain companies and individuals? What do the public, who ultimately end up voting, prefer: Ayuso saying she will be the worst nightmare for those leaders who try and raise taxes, or president Pere Aragonès asserting that Andalusia and Madrid will not be able to compete with Catalonia through fiscal dumping? The fact is that Madrid already competes, and with an advantage, and Andalusia is setting up its fast track to do the same by inviting 7,200 new taxpayers, and hence the reference to Catalan businesspeople, to change their address to compensate for the more than 90 million euros that the Madrid community will not longer collect.
It is clear that the People's Party is in electoral mode and that these kinds of initiatives have the approval of the leader of the party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo. As it is also indisputable that Mariano Rajoy arrived at the Spanish government palace in 2011 with a well-recited campaign discourse that he would lower taxes, before doing just the opposite. But in politics you live in the present, the past matters little and the truth is that both Ayuso and Moreno have adopted a line of "autonomous communities without taxes" and the debate is not focused on the cutting of budgets in social areas as sensitive as health or education, because, if that were the case, with the Covid fatalities that occurred in the Community of Madrid, its president would not even have been able to stand for re-election, whereas the reality was that she was carried to an absolute majority wearing a demagogic halo which promoted her as leading "the community of liberty".
In this debate that has now opened, Catalonia will have to find its own place if it does not want to lose its shirt, between the two poles that have been established: the pro-dumping line of the PP and the pro-recentralization of the minister Escrivá. Because the Spanish government's expression of disapproval over Escrivá has no more value than what it has, while the testing of the waters for new policies, which is what Pedro Sánchez knows how to do best, is already underway. It is possible that also, in Catalonia, it will be time to bring to an end certain distortions that have occurred under the independence process: that only one political space has sacrificed its traditional policies, and the plans pursued by many departments very often have an almost uniquely left-wing component. As if there wasn't an ideological alternative to these initiatives which, sooner or later, will have to be argued for and put on the table by those who include them in their manifesto, if they want to play the match on their own turf.