President Pere Aragonès explains in Madrid a singular financial proposal and defends full tax sovereignty for Catalonia

The president of Catalonia’s Generalitat government Pere Aragonès has presented a singular financial model which would mean that the Generalitat would collect and manage all tax revenues from Catalan taxpayers, as is the case in the Basque Country and Navarre, and which is to be another milestone in the resolution of the conflict between Catalonia and Spain. He made the announcement in Madrid in a talk organized by the Europa Press agency.

Mr Aragonès bemoaned the current financial model that leads to a €22 billion fiscal deficit every year, as well as the Spanish government’s chronic non-compliance with investment pledges in Catalonia, and insisted on the need to establish a bilateral relationship with the central administration: “Concerning budgetary execution, the Spanish Socialist governments behave the same way as those of the People's Party. It's no use budgeting more if they end up spending the same, that is to say, little, late and badly.”

In this regard, he emphasized the urgency of singular financing in the face of the unjust and arbitrary system of the Spanish state, which does not respond to the needs of the Catalan economy. Catalonia must “be able to decide on all levies and adapt them to the reality of our productive model.”

The singular finance scheme would mean an improvement in the Catalan economy, which is currently already growing above that in Spain and the European Union and is showing the lowest unemployment in the last 16 years, among other significant data.

In terms of public services, the president insisted on continuing staking on public welfare, with 24,000 new health workers, free infants’ schooling, and the reduction of dependency waiting lists in this legislature, examples of some of the progress that has been made, while reducing the public debt of the Catalan administration.

The president finally highlighted that his Esquerra Republicana government had also managed to achieve breakthroughs at the negotiating table that had hitherto been considered impossible, such as the abolition of the crime of sedition, the pardons, and the amnesty law passed last Thursday and which will put an end to the judicialization phase of the conflict.