Read in Catalan

A piece of advice: be very careful what you read this summer if you don't want to be conned. If you don't, you might experience what a friend explained to me during a discussion over the weekend. The debate originated from a report published in the economy section of El País newspaper and entitled, "The autonomous communities save 22 billion euros from state credits." The newspaper explained how, thanks to the Ministry of Finance, the autonomies have seen their public coffers alleviated with the aid of payments to suppliers and from the Autonomous Liquidity Fund (FLA). Two mechanisms, by the way, that in the hands of the Finance Minister, Cristóbal Montoro, have been nothing other than a surgical way to financially suffocate the autonomous communities.

Well, since 2012, the autonomies have received, according to the newspaper's calculation, loans of more than 160 billion euros through these mechanisms, sums that they would not have been able to meet because the markets had closed the doors on them and did not want to refinance the autonomous debt. My friend, who is convinced of the mistreatment by the Spanish state in Catalonia, yet who is politically active with a certain indifference, both in terms of financing debates as well as deficits in infrastructure, did not know what to say when the interlocutor concluded: of the 22 billion euros that the autonomies had saved, an important part, 7.5 billion euros, had been saved in Catalonia.

The figure was there and, in depth, the message: the Spanish state has subsidised the finances of Catalonia. His irritation was extreme when, after almost a few hours, he read, somewhat unwillingly, the explanation of professor Santiago Niño-Becerra, so simple and so clear when he laid it all open: "Catalonia saves 7.5 billion euros in interests of some money that is actually its own, but what the Spanish state has lent it." That's to say, first of all, the state badly finances an autonomy; secondly, when the autonomy is drowning, it has no other choice than to ask the state for money - and that is its own money; thirdly, it is then granted the funds in return for making certain adjustments; and finally, once it has done everything that has been asked, its financial autonomy is non-existent. The truth is that when it comes to the end, nobody remembers the beginning. And the bank wins.