ABC Editorial: Pedro Sánchez’s spill

Behind the removal of the autonomous debt that the Government of Pedro Sánchez has led to the Council of Fiscal and Financial Policy and that has caused the proposal of the communities governed by the PP, underlies the same political logic behind the amnesty law: it is about satisfying, at the price and institutional cost that is, to the political allies in exchange for the votes that allow the president to continue in the Moncloa. The difference is that while the amnesty can be aberrant for many citizens who are asked for opinion every four years and that will eventually be blessed by a court dressed for the occasion, economic decisions have direct impact on their pocket and are subject to the opinion of the markets. Precisely yesterday, when the First Vice President, Minister of Finance, Deputy Secretary General of the PSOE and candidate for the Presidency of Andalusia, María Jesús Montero, raised the matter, the Standard & Poor’s agency warned investors about the increase in the ‘moral risk’ that the forgiveness of the debt implies and reminded them that it does not solve the problems of infringement of the regions.

The remove is the result of a pact between the Socialists and ERC for the investiture of Sánchez in November 2023. As such, it was announced by Oriol Junqueras, former economic president of the Generalitat, condemned precisely for using public money to finance the secession of Catalonia. Junqueras was already pardoned by Sánchez. With this decision, in addition, part of the effects of the embezzlement are erased. The Socialists have determined to extend the benefit to the rest of the autonomous communities, even those that have a few debt or that can be financed in the markets. This is where calculation methods enter. Most experts consider that quantities have first been assigned, which especially favor Catalonia, and then the attribution criteria have been built. In fact, forgiveness to Andalusia would not be so generous if Montero was not the socialist candidate, as former president Felipe González emphasized yesterday.

The Quitas program is truffled with inconveniences that make it a bad public policy. As the vast majority of experts have highlighted -some of them worked with Montero in Sánchez’s first government -is the problem of ‘moral risk’. Forgiving the debt means withdrawing any brake on reckless management and manirrota, and favoring risky behaviors that originated the problem. In addition, the design of the operation ends up rewarding those who did it worse, since no tax conditionality has been established, which is the basic criterion that must be taken into account when proceeding to a condom or similar. Even the territorial cast is completely arbitrary. To content Catalonia, and favor Andalusia, the figures have undergone torture to say what Montero wants. There is no way to find the amounts logical, whether it is justified in historical infinance or in which the communities suffered a fiscal ‘shock’ that they did not deserve. The result is that the Sánchez government returns to provide different treatment to some Spaniards, who are the ones who vote to the parties he needs to govern, while postponing the rest, creating new inequities in the country. As everyone has already understood, the debt does not disappear. Instead of being responsible for it the inhabitants of the Autonomous Community that the money was spent, now all the Spaniards will be paid through this spill destined only to keep Sanchez in power.