As almost every year at around this time, the Spanish government of the day has presented its annual budget; and, also, as always happens when there is no parliamentary majority to approve it - a circumstance that, lately, has been quite common - the Spanish executive begins a complex process of weaving together enough parliamentary support to get it passed. Furthermore, the same as every year, the accounts presented fail to comply with the third additional provision of Catalonia's Statute of Autonomy, which states that investment in Catalonia will be at a percentage equivalent to the Catalan contribution to Spanish GDP, which would mean, according to the latest data, 19%.
They are close to that level it if it is measured as a percentage, as it stands, at 17.2%, but when it comes to money everything counts, as 1.8% less means that the figure is reduced to 2.23 billion euros. The 1.8 percent lopped off would mean a further investment of more than 300 million euros, a more than respectable figure, which should be enough to wipe the smile of the face of the Spanish finance minister, María Jesús Montero, when she says that the state has budgeted, more or less, the amount that the Statute stipulates. It is true that the figure is much improved compared to last year's, when the budgeted investment was 16.5% of the total. But this is a number that functions only as a consolation prize: the swindle in the budget this year will be a little less fraudulent... and on it goes.
This data cannot be fully appreciated without further figures that are complementary: the first, that the real budget execution of the Spanish state in Catalonia during the period 2015-2018 was only 65.9% of the amount allotted, when in the Community of Madrid it was 113.9%, that is, 13.9 percent more than was budgeted for. You have to be very clever to pull off something like that, as it must be very difficult for people to allocate money to you that is not even budgeted while Catalonia receives one slap in the face after another while it continues to talk with the Spanish government about the welfare of the Catalans.
Just as scandalous as this, or even more so, is the execution of the budgeted investment for the first six months of 2021. According to the state comptrollers, only 13% of the planned investments in Catalonia have been executed in this period, an absolutely outrageous percentage. A figure that, if analyzed in terms of the last ten years, would still make anyone's hair stand on end, as it would mean that a budgeted sum of 28 billion euros had simply not been invested in Catalonia.
It is clear that budgets are a win-win situation when there is no parliamentary majority in Madrid, as is the case at present. The Basque Nationalist Party (PNV) has been playing this game to perfection for years, with the Basque economic agreement and its annual quota assignation giving it an autonomy that the Catalan government would love to have. Even so, they lead the negotiation on the budget and on any other issue in which their votes are essential, and right until the end they talk about specific items they want achieve and not ethereal or ideological aspects.
Because politics, real politics, that which is carried out by the parties who have their hands on the wheel, implies tangible proposals and results on issues such as the done-to-death matter of transferring Catalonia's suburban rail services to the Generalitat of Catalonia. And it is necessary to take a stand on questions where an improvement in the quality of life for ordinary people is at stake, and it is clear that this is achieved with a transfer of this type on a question which causes so much difficulty for thousands of Catalans every day. This is what votes can be used for and not for the difference between politics which is further or less to the left or, in practice, between a liberal and a social democratic line.