Pedro Sánchez: “The real debate on financing is not between territories but between models” | Spain

The first federal commission of the PSOE after the five days of reflection of Pedro Sánchez in the spring arrived preceded due to internal unrest for single funding for Catalonia, that the PP and some socialist territorial leaders assimilate an economic agreement like that of the Basque Country or Navarre. Pedro Sánchez wanted to convey a message of calm in the face of the reproaches of the barons who lacked explanations on the pact of the PSC with ERC that carried out the investiture as president Salvador Illa, promising more resources for the communities but without going into the fine print of the Catalan fiscal pact. Sánchez in fact celebrated Illa's arrival at the Palau de la Generalitat as “a socialist success” and proof that after the years of process“coexistence has been rebuilt” again in Catalonia.

The Prime Minister chose to claim the PSOE as the “vanguard of progressivism” and the guarantor of the welfare state in the face of the PP's fiscal policy of lowering taxes on the highest incomes of the communities. “The real debate is not between territories, but between models. We will always defend that health, education, dependency and pensions are rights that can never be commercialized” against those who “consider public services as goods, rights or merchandise”, he maintained in his open intervention at the highest body of the PSOE between congresses.

“Now the alibi is regional financing, it is the umpteenth excuse with which they pretend to hide their management,” insisted Sánchez on the first occasion that he coincided with the territorial leaders of the PSOE since the controversial agreement with the ERC. The secretary general of the socialists, who informed the more than 300 members of the federal committee that he would run in the elections – even his detractors assume that he will be acclaimed at the 41st Federal Congress in two months in Seville―, He tried to resolve the internal debate, or at least redirect it, by recalling the transfers of millions of dollars to the autonomies since his arrival at La Moncloa.

“Let’s talk about financing, but let’s do it with data: since 2018, we have transferred 935 billion euros to the autonomous communities. With extraordinary contributions, such as the 30 billion euros extra due to covid. They represent 300 billion more than those transferred by the government of Mariano Rajoy. And all this without counting European funds. Never in its life, never in these 40 years of autonomous state, has a Spanish government allocated so many resources to finance the autonomous communities,” Sánchez stressed before entering fully into the central part of his speech.

“The problem is that some ask with one hand, while with the other they give tax gifts to the richest. One out of every three euros that the Spanish government transfers to the Autonomous Community of Madrid is used for this purpose,” he stressed in a very ideological speech and once again with the executive of Isabel Díaz Ayuso as the target of his criticism, typical of the circumstances, in the conclave that will be approved by the Federal Congress and will set the schedule for the rest of the congressional processes that will renew the territorial structure of the PSOE.

Sánchez, who also recalled the increase in waiting lists in Andalusia or the reduction in places of residence in the Valencian Community, stressed that there is “no greater lack of solidarity than the fact that there are right-wing autonomous governments, which as the state money arrives, which is the money of all Spaniards, wherever they live, they divert it with their tax gifts into the pockets of those who are at the top, of those who have the most. The leader of the PSOE even recalled that the PP affirmed on Friday, during the meeting of Alberto Núñez Feijóo with his regional presidents, 18 billion euros of European funds: “They come from the taxes of the middle and working classes to give them in the form of tax reductions to the privileged elites of their autonomous communities. “This is how they defend equality among Spaniards.”

In another gesture to calm internal tensions over the different interpretations of the agreement with the ERC, Sánchez showed himself willing to make “new transfers of powers” and “recognize singularities”, as well as “allow all the autonomous communities that wish to collect and manage more powers. The president justified that this would be “something consistent with our federal state, which we call autonomous in Spain”, as countries like Germany and Canada already do. And above all, he boldly attacked the PP. For example, he recalled that “those who are tearing their clothes today had the same position in their electoral proposal of 2012”. in reference to the PP's tax programme in the Catalan elections of that year, “And now they deny it in a pointless attempt to compete with the far right on far-right and nationalism.”

The PSOE Secretary General said he was convinced that “if this new autonomous stage is well designed, it can contribute to creating a fairer financing system that reduces territorial differences, guarantees the sufficiency of public spending” and, above all, “requires co-responsibility” with autonomous governments. This is another criticism aimed at the PP communities, which could not compete with a tax policy based on the reduction or exemption of taxes, as is the case for property, donations and inheritances. This was at the centre of Sánchez's speech in a context marked by uncertainty, with the 2025 budgets under the awnings and the government is waiting for Junts and ERC to decide on their leadership and roadmap at their congresses in October and November. “There has been a government for a long time. We are ready for this new stage. We have charged batteries, new ideas, the best teams and well-defined priorities. We will move forward with determination, with or without the support of the opposition. With or without the agreement of the legislative power. We leave conformism and immobility to those who have nothing to offer Spain except their agony,” said the president, who thus recognized the weak situation of the Congress. And, at the same time, he thus made it known that even if the budgets were extended, there would be no advance on the general elections.

Sánchez dedicated his final argument to the PSOE bases, the same ones that carried him to the 2017 primaries: “I ask the militants that in the Federal Congress we demonstrate that the party is two steps ahead of the Spanish government. I ask for ambition in the proposals, rigor in the debates, the opening of the doors to the participation of grassroots militancy and all those who, without being members of the PSOE, know that this organization is the only one that allows all possible advances, that each one of them, the resolutions of our Congress always end up sooner or later in the Official State Gazette,” he insisted. “We must mobilize, all of us, me first (…) I claim optimism, these are difficult times for agonies, and there are many in politics,” he concluded in what seemed like a reproach to the critical barons.