The government is skeptical of Sánchez's plans to update the financing system.

PalmThe Spanish government has announced that it is already working on reforming the regional financing system, a pending issue since the model approved by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero expired in 2009. President Pedro Sánchez announced this Wednesday in Congress that the issue would be "put on the table," and the First Vice President and Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, provided further details, as reported by Efe. However, sources within the Balearic Government are "skeptical" about the proposal and are calling on the Ministry to set a timeline, something it has not done so far.

The announcement comes after the Spanish government proposed last week a debt forgiveness for autonomous communities owed €83.252 billion, of which €1.741 billion would be forgiven in the Canary Islands. Although Montero has not clarified the date on which the proposal will be finalized, she has offered some clues. She described as "false" that the Spanish government is promoting "privileges" for Catalonia, with whom it has agreed to a unique financing regime. In this sense, she defended a model that "abounds in solidarity and allows for equality among all autonomous communities, that is, that they are given the same capacity to exercise jurisdiction in all territories." Furthermore, she insisted that the new financing "must provide more resources to all autonomous communities and incorporate a federal vision for all autonomous communities, and therefore guarantee the rights of people in healthcare, education, and dependency."

The financing system must respond to the demands of the autonomous regions and also accommodate the pact with Catalonia reached by the PSOE and ERC. In this regard, ERC spokesperson Gabriel Rufián asked Sánchez "not to be late" in fulfilling the agreement. It provides for the Catalan administration to collect all taxes and transfer a portion to the state, a scheme that the Spanish government considered "generalizable" to other regions. All the communities in the common regime (except Navarre and the Basque Country) have requested that the system be updated.

"We would like him to do it this time."

"Sánchez has been in power since 2018 and has not made any proposal to reform the financing system," point out sources from the Ministry: "We would like him to do so this time, but we are skeptical about it due to his repeated failures in budgetary and financing matters." In the same vein, they consider that the reform "is already poisoned, because it seeks to integrate the Catalan economic agreement, negotiated bilaterally, which entails de facto "leave the common regime."