In the midst of the debate on the possible Catalan concert and regional funding, two regions with different political colours but very similar characteristics, such as Galicia – governed by the PPdeG – and the Principality of Asturias – led by the socialists – share certain points of view, such as the need to start negotiations now or that no Spanish autonomy is currently sufficiently financed. This was stated on Thursday by the regional presidents, Alfonso Rueda and Adría Bárbón, at the sixth edition of the Eo Meetings (in Viveiro, Lugo), organized by the Voice of Galicia and the Voice of Asturias.
Rueda began his speech by emphasizing the importance of talking about regional financing, especially now, he said, before “decisions with no return are made.” And he continued to defend not only his opinion, but also that of the rest of the presidents of the different autonomous communities: “None are adequately funded.. “The idea is to note that there are communities that are particularly poorly funded, […] because when they divide between what they receive and the number of inhabitants, they get a lower figure than what Galicia or Asturias can get. But this, he said, “is not fair”: “What matters is what it costs to provide services to the inhabitants who live in your territory”, an issue on which the two autonomies are “quite similar”.
And, what both leaders agreed on is that the geographical and demographic characteristics of these two neighboring territories – such as the dispersion or the aging of the population, indicated the Galician president – mean that the provision of basic services has a higher cost. According to Rueda, in the last regional financing – which Barbón was kind enough to point out expired 10 years ago – this issue “was already taken into account” and “a little over 500 million were allocated to this special cost of providing services.” euros. However, in Galicia, these characteristics “they do not amount to less than 1,100 or 1,200 million,” This is why, he said, “it is so dangerous to talk about residents” when “what is financed is the provision of services”, around which the new financing model must be thought out.
“Solidarity” and “equality”
In this sense, he is totally opposed to “dividing the financing by autonomous community, giving each one a unique regime without speaking to the others”; because Spain is a country in which “balance” and “equality” between regions are fundamental, and not a “series of territories linked to the central power and They don’t care about the rest“.
He thus called, as he has done on many occasions, for negotiations between all the territories to eventually reach an agreement in which no one will be “completely satisfied”, but in which “everyone will have given in a little” and “everyone will win”. On the other hand, with the Catalan concert system, Galicia would stop receiving 444 million euros, and “if the other contributing communities – the Balearic Islands and Madrid – said that they also want a concert […] “2 billion euros could not be distributed among the autonomous communities.” “If we are a country of solidarity, if we believe in rules that guarantee basic services that are equal everywhere, we cannot accept this system,” he said.
Questions with which, for the most part, the president of the Principality of Asturias agreed, who recalled the Santiago Declarationsigned by eight autonomies in 2021, which already clearly stated that, “now that we talk so much about singularities”, theirs “must also be part of the system”.
So he agreed with Rueda that “All autonomous communities are underfunded“and that it is imperative to open negotiations on regional financing. Of course, he was sure that “there are autonomous communities that, due to their economic power, will be the first to defend the application of the principle of ordinality in the new regional financing system”: “This will not be a debate between parties, it will be a debate between territories”, without excluding the possibility that autonomies governed by the same party could vote differently.
However, according to him, indicated the general secretary of the Asturian Socialist Federation, Spain has a “framework of powers that reaches the level of federal states”, which is why he considers that the solution involves a federal funding system taking into account the different variables. In any case, what, like Rueda, the president of the Principality is “clear” is that he will not support any system that “harms Asturias” and that he will defend “with all his strength” the interests of his community.
