Our economic-financial Constitution is far from being satisfactory. And not only because the concept of an economic Constitution, the one that designates the fundamental legal framework for the structure and functioning of economic activity, seems insufficient in light of the current regulation, but because of the set of constitutional precepts that deal with financial activity . In the State of Autonomies (arts 156-158 CE), it does not provide a secure framework for the development of economic activity, especially in the area of income.
In the constituent period, almost everything territorial was postponed to negotiation (State in fieri) and despite the agreements in 1980 on the LOFCA, the system has not ceased to be characterized by the notes of its transitory and provisional nature without to date being has managed to illuminate a system characterized by sufficiency and equity, as prof. Martín Queralt, without diminishing the leveling and redistributing workforce of the State to meet the demands of promoting the equality of citizens and social groups.
Autonomous financing is currently bifurcated between Communities with a common regime and those with a regional regime (Navarra and the Basque Country). Its historical uniqueness derives from the historical rights of the provincial territories (First additional provision of the EC). As is known, Navarra (former King of Navarra until 1841 and with its own Cortes until 1833) and Álava reached the constituent stage with a regime of Agreement and Economic Agreement.
Vizcaya and Guipúzcoa were punished by the regime of General Franco as they were considered traitor provinces, despite the fact that the birth of the Concerts for each of these territories of the Basque Country was the work of Cánovas del Castillo (Jaime I Del Burgo, Cánovas and the Concerts s economic, 2010) to alleviate the loss of the traditional Fueros after the third Carlist and the law of July 21, 1876 or exempt provinces)
Already under the validity of the CE/1978, it was the great Minister of Finance of the UCD, Jaime García Añoveros (1979-1982) who, together with the Basque Finance Minister Pedro Luis Uriarte (The Basque economic concert: a personal question, 2015) forged the figure of the current Economic Agreement, which gave historical reparation to an unjust measure, such as Franco’s 1939 Punishment Decrees, circumventing the opinion of many senior treasury officials who have always distrusted the diversification of the general treasury. in state and regional ones (art. 149.1 14 CE).
History and its creators should not be forgotten since, together with good administration and faith in the trigger of the parliamentary group in Congress, the Basque Country enjoys financing per inhabitant much higher than that of the common Regime, although things are They have been leveling, thanks to state action, but certain differences remain to their benefit.
It is therefore striking that President Pere Aragonés, with the Catalan elections called, returns to the Ordago of the Fiscal Pact of Artur Mas proposed to Rajoy in 2012 and speaks of the granting of an economic agreement for Catalonia as if the Constitution, once a sacred and inviolable text , is changed as if it were a ductile text with the simple majority of the Congress of Deputies, which, according to Minister Bolaños, is where national sovereignty resides, thus redefining art. 1.3 CE (national sovereignty resides in the Spanish people from whom the powers of the State emanate), confusing sovereignty with representation (art. 66.1 CE), and of course, that’s how it goes!
The theoretical issue, which some well-intentioned people defend – in view of the benefits of the Concert and Agreement for the Basque Country and Navarra – is the generalization of the concert system for all Spanish Autonomous Communities. It is surely a desideratum that has never been economically quantified, except in some theoretical model (see, I. ZUBIRI, “The regional systems: characteristics, results and their possible generalization” 2007, answered by Angel De la Fuente, Fedea Report 2018, considering that it is not It is a good idea neither in efficiency nor equity.
Although it is now said, it was not always the case that the concert and agreement system has never meant effective harm to the state fiscal unit, due to the harmonizing nature of its provisions and the size of the Basque and Navarrese economies. More important is the first with a participation of around 6% of the state GDP (rather 5.9), duly salted by the Basque minority in Congress when it comes to renegotiating the quota, or 1.6 of the Navarrese.
Claim, as is now proposed by the Catalan independence movement, to be able to collect 100% of the taxes, which does not happen with complete accuracy either in the Basque or Navarrese case) in exchange for a quota from a region that contributes close to 20% of the GDP, It would break the financial constitution (Art 128 and 131 CE, among others) producing, in addition to the rebellion of the other Autonomous Communities, in the LOFCA council, the frontal or concealed rejection according to the interests at stake of Basque and Navarrese nationalism. The times have passed when, as Gabriel Tortella explained to us, Catalonia, with its protectionist tariff policy, looked above man to the whole of Spain, given its greater economic growth.
Without a doubt, the time has also passed to catalanize Spain as F. Cambó preached in the 1920s, when today the motto would be to constitutionalize Catalonia, seeking at least the Orteguin influence or respect and loyalty to a State that not only It does not rob them but rather it singles them out and protects them (at least from fiscal bankruptcy given the state of their finances).
Beyond the economic issues presented, it is not possible to generalize for Catalonia or for any other Autonomous Community with a special historical entity (let us think, without exclusions, in Castile, Aragon or Valencia), a regime of economic concert as in the so-called Foral Communities (in the strict sense only the Foral Community of Navarra), without modifying the 1978 Constitution. Think otherwise, dismantling the tax power of the state as a whole would determine a kind of Iberian Confederation incompatible in all its extremes with the Current Constitution.
