Pedro Sánchez has brought back opposition to the communities governed by the Popular Party as an element of his speech to deal with the wear and tear he is suffering from the pact on the singular financing of Catalonia negotiated with ERC to push forward the investiture of Salvador Illa. The Community of Madrid is thus back in the spotlight, as is the clash in Moncloa with the Madrid president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso.
But beyond the political struggles, the figures of Sánchez’s economic legacy and institutional relationship with the Community of Madrid leave little room for doubt about the imbalance in the balance when compared to Catalonia. And this double standard undoubtedly has a lot to do with the fact that Catalonia is a voting ground for Sánchez, while Madrid seems to be given up for loss, or so can be deduced from the strategy they follow with the community. The latest update of the comparisons is overwhelming.
For example, the analysis of territorialized investments in the General State Budget since Pedro Sánchez became president, or since the last Budgets prepared by the Madrid Government, leaves the following figures. Investments in Madrid have grown by only 4.65% compared to 32.7% of the total. Madrid, with 14% of the Spanish population, and which generates more than 19% of the GDP, received only 9.7% of the total territorialized investments in the 2023 General State Budget, a figure clearly lower than the 12.3% of Rajoy’s last budgets. For its part, investments in Catalonia account for 17.2% of the total. Since Sánchez approved the budgets, they have risen by 71.1%.
As regards investment per inhabitant, Madrid is also clearly at a disadvantage, being the fourth region with the lowest investment, barely €193.35 per inhabitant (Catalonia receives €297.45 per inhabitant). In addition, Sánchez’s refusal to present Budgets for 2024 and to update the advance payments by decree has meant that Madrid has stopped receiving €105 million each month that it was due, to which must be added a higher financing expense to have liquidity.
These differences are widened by specific measures approved by the Council of Ministers, which then force the Autonomous Communities to incur additional expenses without providing resources for them. In the specific case of Madrid, the accumulated cost of these obligations is close to 5.5 billion euros, including the almost 4 billion that the State should have contributed for the 50% of the cost of dependency that corresponds to it according to the Law.
But there are more grievances, such as the abandonment of the surrounding areas. The decapitalization, “extracting” headquarters, such as the Aerospace Agency, when the sector, which is 80 percent in Madrid, asked for it to stay here. The deficit of Police and Civil Guard. The “attacks” with energy, as they describe it from Sol, with the complaint that they are not allowed to increase power to attend to the investments that come to the community, and with water, with the autonomous management intervening in the new regulation of the Hydrological Plan of the Tagus. The non-recognition of the new million Madrid residents for financing and services. And the “imposition” of the Wealth Tax.
The President of the Executive responded to the figures cited, which are against the Community of Madrid, on Wednesday by accusing the Government of Madrid of having diverted 1,000 million euros to private healthcare in just one year. Sol denies this. “Not a single euro of the more than 10,000 million euros of public money destined for public healthcare is being diverted.”
Of the budget for health in the Community of Madrid, the amount allocated to all hospitals amounts to 6.767 billion euros.
Of these, more than 900 million are allocated to indirectly managed hospitals (among which is the Gómez Ulla, which depends on the Ministry of Defense). Private agreements in the Community of Madrid account for only 11 percent, compared to, for example, more than 23 percent in Catalonia. In the Community of Madrid, of the 35 hospitals of the Madrid Health Service, only six are indirectly managed public hospitals. The Catalan model means that of the 56 hospitals that make up its health network, only eight belong to the Catalan Health Institute.
Today, all the regional presidents of the PP, with the exception of the president of the Balearic Islands who is not attending the event due to scheduling problems, will sign a document of commitment to equality, which is intended to be a political response to the agreement with ERC on the Catalan agreement. “All together,” the text reads, in defense of equality and multilateralism.