Accustomed as we are to receiving the impacts of Spain's mistreatment of Catalonia - and careful, it is worth underlining that when it comes to the effects on services, the affront is not to the pro-independence parties, but to all Catalans - sometimes it happens that little attention is paid to the numbers. And it all ends up turning into a debate of more or less resonant phrases in which everyone has their say and the alignment is on party lines. This should not be the case with the presentation of Catalonia's fiscal deficit drawn up by the Catalan ministry economy from the 2019 data, the latest it has been able to calculate using the most recent statistics available. Thus we learned this Thursday that the difference between what the Spanish state spends in Catalonia and the amount of Catalan income that goes into the state's coffers amounts to 20.196 billion euros. An abomination, considering that if we divide it by the country's population, the Generalitat of Catalonia would be able to invest an average of 7,800 euros in each citizen instead of the 5,071 euros it does currently. Another comparison: the 20.2 billion euro sum is the equivalent of the combined total of the health, education and social rights budgets of the Catalan government.
We are not, therefore, talking about something ethereal. But rather, about schools, hospitals, infrastructure, universities, technology, tax cuts, assistance to the business fabric and so many other things. An amount in the billions of euros that we Catalans generate, which is sent to Madrid and does not return, with which the plunder becomes ever greater and subjects Catalonia to a financial agony which is inappropriate and inadequate considering the resources it generates. I know that there is a lot of demagoguery, and it's also very easy to echo it every time these issues are discussed: that the Catalans spend it on self-serving business schemes or waste it on superfluous things. One of the advantages of having a state, or at least absolute fiscal autonomy, in line with the Basque and Navarra taxation sovereignty, is that I have never heard any Basques talk about having dodgy business schemes, or any disparaging comments of that nature. Fiscal autonomy is, above all, autonomy. Here, on the other hand, in the common regime where Catalonia is, there is a pitched battle over every euro in the common purse.
The minister Giró is right when he uses three adjectives to denounce the ill-treatment that Catalonia receives from the state: it is systemic, endemic and disloyal. It is systemic because not only does it not correct itself over the years, but it is growing. It is endemic because it usually affects the same areas. And it is, above all, disloyal. Disloyal not on the part of a government - whether a PP or a PSOE government, more or less the same thing usually happens - but on the part of a Spanish state that for too many years has been working only towards the financial suffocation of Catalonia. This is a reality that may annoy those who are accused of it, but they have no arguments to defend themselves in an academic debate. The figures are irrefutable and what is strange is that there has not been a revolt that brings all of Catalan society together. Or is it that the leaders of the PP, PSC, Vox and Ciudadanos don't want their children to go to better public schools or better hospitals, with shorter waiting lists than the current ones?
It is urgent to reverse this situation and build political alliances to reverse it. And it must be done, even if it requires us, in the autonomous community framework in which we are immersed and which we want to leave, but have not yet left. What is outrageous is that people here continue to give guarantees to the government in Madrid while this pillage does nothing but get bigger and bigger. Carrying out political action that considers the country as a whole, its prosperity and its wealth is another thing. One last piece of information, in these two minutes that you will have taken to read this article, 76,840 euros that we Catalans have paid in taxation will not return to Catalonia. So, how long?