There was a time when within the Popular Party, and not just the Catalan one, an improvement in the financing of Catalonia was proposed, identical to the Basque and Navarrese agreement. The newspaper archives are a bucket of cold water for many of the almost incendiary statements that popular leaders have made in recent days about the agreement between the socialists and Esquerra Republicana and which allowed the investiture of Salvador Illa as president of the Generalitat. And there is more: in the program of the Catalan elections of 2012, the star proposal was to “achieve a new unique financing system”, with “regulatory capacity” and collection of all taxes, although within the common system. This proposal was very close to what has now been agreed between the socialists and ERC.
The historic commitment of the Catalan PP to an increase in income for the Catalan coffers is determined by its close relationship with the Catalan business community, a group that has always considered that the community sees its growth possibilities hampered by the lack of investment by the State. Already in 2005, the then leader of the Popular Party in Catalonia, Josep Piqué, raised the need for improvements to the system and to recognise a certain uniqueness, echoing the demands of the business community. A common struggle that led, in March of this year, to twenty employers’ associations and business institutions of different political sensibilities and who do not always manage to reach an agreement signing a document in favour of new financing for Catalonia.
The relationship between the party and part of the business community continues and that could partly explain the restraint of the Catalan Popular Party in the face of the current controversy. In Illa’s appearance last Thursday in the Parliament, the leader of the Popular Party bench, Alejandro Fernández, put the emphasis on attacking “Sanchism” and the relationship with Esquerra rather than repeating the argument about financing. Although he described it as an exit from an “asymmetrical confederation” that “does not respect the rules of the game”, he believes that the result will be different: “No more resources will come to Catalonia, more taxes will come to Catalonia, and if not, in time,” predicted Fernández.
One of the points of greatest communion between the popular and that demand for an improvement in the financing of the Generalitat came in 2012. At the dawn of the process The pro-independence Catalan PP tried to act as a dam against the proposals of Artur Mas and Convergència, who in September of that month brought their proposal for a “fiscal pact” to the then head of government, Mariano Rajoy. The proposal for this repeat election by those then led by Alicia Sánchez Camacho, now a member of the Madrid Assembly, had as its centre of gravity the achievement of “a new unique financing system for Catalonia”.
The electoral programme for that contest shows that the reference to “singularity” did not have the connotation of territorial grievance that the PP now favours. The document, entitled ‘Catalonia yes, Spain too’, supported the need for differentiated treatment in order to “resolve the systematic problem of the Generalitat’s financial insufficiency to meet its responsibilities”. “I will defend this model to the end. If my party does not accept it, I will assess the consequences. For us, improving the financing model of Catalonia is a priority”, said the then member of Parliament and candidate for the presidency of the Generalitat in an interview with Catalunya Ràdio.
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Sánchez Camacho’s party saw it possible to promote this singularity within the common regime – the great difference with respect to the model agreed between PSC and ERC – through measures such as “the increase in ceded taxes and participation in the tax basket”. In addition to achieving the transfer of “regulatory capacity”, the establishment of formulas for collaboration between the respective tax agencies, according to the electoral programme, would allow “the management, collection, liquidation and inspection of all own, ceded and transferred taxes”.
The electoral programme of the Catalan Popular Party – with which they managed to gain a share of the vote and one more deputy – promised that the principle of ordinality would be respected in the new formula. It thus advocated guaranteeing “the maintenance of the Catalan position with respect to its own per capita income” once the mechanism of levelling inter-territorial solidarity was applied. And, even in line with what Junts per Catalunya now defends, Sánchez Camacho wanted these contributions to other territories to be final. “We must guarantee that the funds that Catalonia sends to the communities are used to help them grow and not to give subsidies or give away money,” he added in that same interview with Catalan public radio.
But the newspaper archives are also particularly cruel with the president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo. In his event this Friday with the territorial barons, at the Palace of the Dukes of Pastrana in Madrid, the leader of the opposition in Congress has made “stopping the pro-independence quota” a priority for the course, the result of what he considers an “institutional disloyalty” on the part of the central government and that of the Generalitat. These statements are added to many others in which he made it clear that there was no room for discussion of a model along those lines because it was “outside the legal system” and because he was sure that there would be no regional president willing to give up “what is his” for the benefit of a single autonomous community.
Núñez Feijóo, the president of his party, seems to think very differently from the former leader of the Xunta de Galicia. In 2016, in a speech at the annual meeting of the Círculo de Economía, his position on a possible differential treatment for Catalonia was very different. In front of dozens of businessmen he said: “I don’t know, except for a couple of autonomous communities, that don’t say that Madrid doesn’t give me what I’m entitled to. So, well, I’m not saying that the Catalan agreement isn’t right in terms of the demand, because it’s true that Euskadi has it and Navarra has it. That’s absolutely true. It’s also true that in the constituent discussion, well, an agreement was reached that Catalonia should not have an agreement. Now, it’s true that these things can be changed and can be raised and discussed, right?”
The current leader of the PP, in fact, showed the complexity of a debate that, unlike his current position, he did not close ranks or see as something implacably outside the law: “What is measured and what is not measured and what is weighted and what is not weighted?”
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