The fact that the Spanish government's annual budget always turns into a chain of failures of compliance in Catalonia should not get in the way of underlining something that is obvious: the public accounts presented by the Pedro Sánchez government for 2023 will, once again, not fulfil the third additional provision of the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia, and the percentage of investment in Catalonia will not be equivalent to the Catalan contribution to Spain's gross domestic product. As if by magic, in the place where the 19% figure should appear, according to the last data available, it turns into 17.2%, and the 2.55 billion euros become 2.31 billion. The first trimming down of something established in the Statute, already means that the Generalitat of Catalonia's funds will be short of 241 million that got lost on the road between Madrid and Barcelona, which in practice will end up meaning that they have been left in the capital of Spain.
The minister for the treasury, María Jesús Montero, when presenting the public accounts, was a long way from showing any blushes about this and boasted that the Spanish government had complied with its obligations in Catalonia. The Spanish Socialists' way of complying is curious, based on always failing to comply but saying that they have done so. Thus, it must be very easy to do politics when you turn what is a blatant lie into truth, and so on, until the next one. The truth is that the ministers of the PSOE and the PP don't care, and the third additional provision of the Statute is passed over indiscriminately. In only one year, when José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was prime minister, was it fulfilled.
Therefore, the budget's passage through the Congress of Deputies is off to a bad start. Because after the first pruning down of Catalonia's income, which is always the most delicate, because it remains in view of the public, comes the second and harshest one, which is none other than the non-compliance with even the committed investments through the failure to execute the spending set out in the budget. Here, the ministers are real magicians, because year after year they manage to ensure that in Catalonia less than 65% of the budgeted amount is executed and, on the other hand, in Madrid it remains well above 100% of the budgeted amount. In the latest data available, the 113.9% execution is something that is really hard to explain and yet everyone finds it normal in Madrid.
It is normal for the Spanish treasury to envisage a complex negotiation of the budget with the government's parliamentary partners, although it is also true that in the final stretch of the legislature, the extension of the previous year's public accounts would not be a drama either. We will see how the negotiating triangulation of Spanish Congress, Catalan Parliament, and Barcelona City Council works at a time when political instability in Catalonia is high and political incentives are scarce, with municipal elections just around the corner. Everyone says they want to make budget pacts, but in practice, everyone is waiting for their rival to fail to do so. The common good, if it ever existed, is locked away in a closet.