The Government has forced the approval of the new financing model despite having only obtained the vote in favor of the Generalitat of Catalonia and the Canary Islands Government. The rest of the non-foral communities of both the PP and the PSOE have voted against, according to sources familiar with the result of the vote in the Fiscal and Financial Policy Council tell EL MUNDO.
Socialist and PP communities have thus united against the Government's financing model in the Fiscal and Financial Policy Council this Friday, but choosing to participate without supporting the boycott of the Community of Madrid. Both the socialist Treasury councilors of Castilla-La Mancha and Asturias and those of the PP communities - with the exception of the Canary Islands, which is also declared the winner as the Generalitat in the new model - voted against the model presented by the Minister of Finance, Arcadi España, and which is the one agreed last December with the leader of Esquerra, Oriol Junqueras.
The counselor of Castilla-La Mancha, Juan Alfonso Ruiz Molina, announced to EL MUNDO that he would request at the CPFF meeting that the proposal be withdrawn or, failing that, that Arcadi España renounce its casting vote.
The minister can carry out the system change with the support only of the Generalitat of Catalonia - that of the Canary Islands has also been guaranteed - despite having 13 other common regime communities against it. On the other hand, if the minister abstains, Catalonia and the Canary Islands would not be able to stop the majority's rejection. Ruiz Molina defends that this would be democratic, because the alternative is to impose the model on the majority of the Autonomous Communities.
For her part, the Minister of the Treasury of Andalusia, Carolina España, has declared before the meeting in Canal Sur that she will vote against, but that she hopes that the Cortes, which will have to make a decisive vote later, will subsequently overthrow the model.
Carolina España, like the majority of PP councilors, does not support the attempted boycott of the Government of Isabel Díaz Ayuso, because they do not consider it effective. The Madrid Treasury Minister, Rocío Albert, announced this Thursday that she is not attending the CPFF and urged the rest not to attend to prevent there from being a quorum to approve items on the agenda.
However, various PP advisors consulted maintain that this tactic would only delay the process, but could not neutralize it. The Ministry of Finance could consider, in its opinion, that the procedure has been completed as it has merely advisory value since what will be decisive will be Parliament.
For his part, the minister's intention is to save the vote in the CPFF this Friday without giving up his vote and trusting that Junts will end up supporting him in Congress. The independence group has already announced "an amendment to the entirety" and demands an economic agreement like that of the Basque Country, something that the PSOE has not granted so far.
In any case, if in the end there is no change of model, the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, will be able to argue before Junqueras that he fulfilled the pact that also allows Salvador Illa to continue governing in the Generalitat.
The PP leadership denies any break in unity. The PP spokesperson in the Congress of Deputies, Ester Muñoz, stated this Friday on National Radio that the party respects that an autonomous community, in this case Madrid, "in the scope of its powers", is absent from today's Fiscal and Financial Policy Council, where the proposal to reform the autonomous financing system will be approved. "We must respect it. It is an autonomous community that, within the scope of its responsibilities, decides not to go to this meeting," he declared. For Muñoz, "what is really important" is that there is going to be a vote, with the PP communities and some socialists against "a financing system that has been created outside of all of Spain."
For his part, the president of Castilla-La Mancha, Emiliano García-Page, declares himself "outraged" with the central government. "It is enormously painful that it is a Government that calls itself permanently left-wing, the one that agrees on the most unsupportive, most unfair, most unequal model of Spanish democracy. It treats those who have the most more and better and those who have the least much worse," he declared on Antena 3.
Support for Ceuta
On the other hand, the PP Finance Ministers have signed a declaration, including Albert, of support for Ceuta in which they state their demand for state support. "We consider that the State guarantees all sufficient human, material and financial resources to address the emergency, fully recover normality and prevent the extraordinary costs derived from compromising the budgetary stability of the city or the adequate provision of public services to its citizens." They do not mention the reception of immigrant minors from Ceuta, although the central government has not been insisting in recent days on a possible distribution.
