Catalan concert and confusion of the left

That this programme has the support of the party that leads the Spanish government would also have been excellent news if such an agreement did not relate to certain issues that affect all Spaniards without us being informed or authorised to give an opinion.

Once again, major decisions affecting the stability of the constitutional system were not presented in the electoral program or in the government program of the president. Pedro Sanchezare taken within the framework of an investiture debate aimed at forming a certain parliamentary majority.

This way of making decisions is nothing but democratic fraud and shows the weakness of our civic culture (“parochial” or “slave” in the terminology of Gabriel Almond And Sydney Verba) if tolerated.

Among the commitments contained in the thirty-four pages of the document signed by the ERC and the CPS, the importance of promoting a single financing system that advances towards full fiscal sovereignty, based on the bilateral relationship with the State, stood out for its importance.

Both parties, left-wing as they insist in the text, assume the pro-independence narrative of the mistreatment of Catalonia’s tax system. They do not seem to have read with profit the contributions of the researchers (Angel of the Fountain, Budget balances and some related issuesJuly 2024) or the now classic one of the professor and former minister Jose Borrell (Stories and Tales of Independence2015).

“The unique financing committed to Catalonia is an imitation of the Basque Country model and, despite the Minister of Finance, it presents all the essential characteristics of a concert”

This allegedly abusive underfunding, experts say, is not what is reflected in the annual regulations of the financing system that place Catalonia in the national average of income per capita and whose unjustified biases can and must in any case be corrected with the agreement of all and without breaking the common financing system. This inattention to objective data and the contributions of experts is a mark of these legislatures known for their legislative frivolity.

In the case of ERC, its blindness to the data is not surprising. But it is striking in the case of the PSC that it does not take into account the work of a Catalan socialist like José Borrell, who must be thanked for the clarity and firmness with which he has always denounced the stories of the independentists. and defended a better insertion of Catalonia in constitutional Spain.

The single financing committed to Catalonia, which has very little to do with the German federal system, is an imitation of the Basque Country model and, despite the Minister of Finance, it presents all the essential features of a concert.

As agreed, the Catalan Government, with the key to the fund in hand, will collect, manage, liquidate and regulate all taxes incurred in Catalonia. This will contribute to the common fund the cost (to be valued) of the services provided by the State, plus an amount to be negotiated for solidarity, the amount of which must be limited by the principle of ordinality.

This is a new principle which guarantees that inter-territorial transfers cannot modify the classification which today differentiates the richest territories from the poorest.

This is what, in a strange ideological camaraderie, Two parties that insist on proclaiming themselves left have signed.

The agreement in question raises issues of legality/constitutionality, questions of fairness, and will, in any case, produce a denaturalization of the social and democratic rule of law itself.

Let’s start with the legal issues.

The agreement breaks the common financing system of our autonomous communities as regulated by the LOFCA. For its implementation, it will be necessary to exclude Catalonia from the common financing regime through the reform of the aforementioned law.

Does the Government have the necessary votes for this? If we are to believe the public statements of some government partners, there would not be any today. And this in principle reassures those who regard the form and substance of the aforementioned agreement with logical fear and rejection.

But perhaps it is better not to be overconfident in this regard and it is more prudent to count on the possibility of merging a parliamentary majority (progressive?) to implement the agreement.

“It is not very prudent to exclude a priori the possibility that Pedro Sánchez will obtain a majority willing to reform the LOFCA”

First, because in the biography of this government it is widely acknowledged that when it comes to accessing or maintaining power, there are no “things outside of commerce”, whether it is the equality of citizens (amnesty), the Penal Code (sedition, embezzlement, pardons) or fragments of the State itself.

In this way of doing politics, if the counter-majoritarian institutions of any liberal democracy are duly neutralized, as is the case of the Constitutional Court, everything is negotiable. And everything has its price.

Second, when they govern, today’s hyper-leaders have, both internally and externally, enormous institutional (appointments), financial (budget) and regulatory resources to obtain the majorities they need. It is not a question of intelligence or competence: it is enough to lack limits. It is therefore not very prudent to exclude a priori the possibility of achieving a majority willing to reform the LOFCA. Everything depends on the government’s ability to match supply and demand.

But even if this majority were obtained in the political market, the development of a new agreement for Catalonia would raise problems of constitutionality, without these being resolved, as some suggest, by the implementation of said agreement through a reform of the Statute of Catalonia to which a system similar to that of the Basque Statute or the system of Navarre would be transposed.

It is true that the Basque Country (Title III of its Statute) and Navarre (art. 45 et seq. of the Law of Reintegration and Improvement of the Regional Regime) benefit from a unique financing system, different from that of the rest of the communities and whose explanation We must look at the dramatic circumstances that had to be overcome in the transition.

But, in any case, its basis is in the Constitution itself, whose first additional provision (for the Basque Country) and the second (for Navarre) served as a hook so that these two unique financing models were recognized at the time and that they had nothing federalizing about them, except in the oxymoron of asymmetrical federalization.

What constitutional provision could be the basis for a single financing for Catalonia such as that provided for in the agreement? There is none. The Constitution should be reformed by adding a third additional provision for Catalonia. Or, imitating the coffee for everything suggested by the government, include in this reform fourteen additional reforms for each of the communities, with the consequence of the non-viability not only of the State of the autonomies, but of the social and democratic State itself.

This lack of constitutional link of a concert for Catalonia cannot be a definitive obstacle for a majority that, as we have seen, considers that a parliament can do everything that is not expressly prohibited by the Constitution. Abusing apparent loopholes is often the first strategy to erode liberal democracies (Levitski And Ziblatt, Dictatorship. How to reverse the authoritarian drift and build a democracy for allMay 2024).

Alleging the non-existence of an express constitutional prohibition has become a typical argument that has already been used to approve an amnesty law, which will help some to justify the constitutionality of the new agreement and, if necessary, to defend the constitutionality of this referendum that was discussed in Brussels with Junts.

In this way, without reform of the Constitution, and through illegitimate constitutional mutations, the nature of our social and democratic rule of law can be modified, transforming the State of autonomies into a confederal State and eroding liberal democracy.

The left-wing organisations (PSC, PSOE, Podemos, Sumar, Compromís) seem to have suddenly discovered a previously unknown passion for the concert. If so, it does not seem to fit very well with the ideal of equality that has always been part of its characteristics. Many people ideologically on the left will be surprised that their parties demand more funding for one of the richest regions, and less solidarity with the disadvantaged regions. and a substantial increase in state transfers to Catalonia during the transitional period.

This is the first time that we can read and see how two left-wing parties publicly and expressly defend the limitation of solidarity and the maintenance of inequalities. This agreement should therefore raise the question within the left of what it means to be left-wing today.

“The criterion of differentiation between right and left has historically been, and continues to be today, the different position of each in relation to the ideal of equality”

In 1994 he published Norberto Bobbio Left and right. Ragioni and meaning of a distinctionThe book was immediately translated in Spain and presented Gregorio Peces-Barba as one of those encouraging signs that shine at a time of crisis and ideological disorientation of a left that was beginning to replace the flag of equality with that of identities.

Bobbio summarized this text in three theses.

First, there has always been a right and a left.

Secondly, that the criterion of freedom serves to draw the line between extremists and moderates on the right and left.

Thirdly, that the criterion of differentiation between right and left has historically been, and continues to be today, that of the different position of each before the ideal of equality. Equality, he concluded, has always been the North Star to which the left turns and continues to turn..

Perhaps Norberto Bobbio no longer understood the new times that were about to arrive. After all, he was eighty-five years old when he wrote this work. Or perhaps he saw the first signs of disorientation and confusion on the left.

In any case, the proposal of the PSC and the ERC puts on the table a capital question for the State of Autonomies and for the social and democratic State of law; and also an existential problem for the left itself.

*** Virgilio Zapatero is Rector Emeritus of the University of Alcalá.