The Community of Madrid will not attend this Friday's Fiscal and Financial Policy Council (CPFF), to which the Ministry of Finance and the autonomous communities have been summoned to advance the reform of the regional financing system. It has urged the remaining PP governments to follow suit so that the quorum necessary to constitute the body is not met—a stance that the department headed by Arcadi España has described as "institutional vandalism." Isabel Díaz Ayuso's executive justified its refusal to attend the meeting because it considers that the proposal on the table was agreed upon "bilaterally" between the central government and the Catalan Generalitat, "behind the backs" of the other communities.
"This is a financing system that breaks with the equality of all Spaniards and seeks to launder the debt generated by the corrupt management of pro-independence governments, which the current socialist president has continued and intensified," they expressed early Thursday afternoon regarding their refusal to attend the CPFF. The meeting was initially scheduled for late last July to debate the draft proposal sent in early July by Finance, but it was postponed by Minister España at the request of the regional PP governments.
The 'popular' Finance and Economy regional ministers sent a letter informing María Jesús Montero's successor that they saw a "hasty" attempt by Pedro Sánchez's executive to approve a proposal that was "the result of a bilateral pact with ERC" and had the rejection of 16 out of the 17 territories included in the model—including Asturias and Castilla-La Mancha, governed by the PSOE—as they recalled. The head of Finance agreed to delay the Council, which will take place this Friday in Madrid's absence. It remains to be seen whether other regional PP governments will also abstain, as the Madrid government urges them not to attend so that the body cannot be constituted in accordance with regulations.
"The only way this agreement cannot materialize in the CPFF is for there to be no quorum at the meeting," Díaz Ayuso's executive argued on Thursday. "The Community Government has expressed its position in the internal meetings it held with the national leadership of the PP and the rest of the Economy and Finance regional ministers," the same sources emphasized. At the time of writing, no other PP autonomous community had joined the boycott promoted by Madrid.
Díaz Ayuso's executive criticized the proposal to reform the current regional financing system—in force since 2009 and expired since 2014—championed by the Ministry of Finance since last January, when María Jesús Montero, then vice president and head of the portfolio, outlined its main points. "What has been presented to us today is state corruption in its absolute form," stated Rocío Albert, Madrid's regional minister of Economy, after the first CPFF held with the reform proposal on the table.
"We are not going to accept that Catalonia and the Catalan pro-independence party receive 83% more than Madrid receives, with very similar capacities," she added regarding the model that allocated 2.555 billion euros more to the region than the current one, and 4.686 billion to Catalonia. "It is a completely confiscatory system that destroys the soul of this region," insisted Díaz Ayuso in her reproach just a few weeks ago.
