The orphaned nationalists of their own state are always at mass and chiming. On his knees before the main altar and, at the same time, in the bell tower watching the approach of the enemy (of course, a ghost of his imagination). His orphanhood is not synonymous with schizophrenia. Yes, it is pragmatism and political opportunism. In Spain there are regional nationalisms – you will forgive me for the “contradictio in terminis” – that pimp the rest of us with their lewd groping of the financing system (naturally “autonomous”).
Conceptually, stateless nationalisms are islands within a community they despise. They subvert the common system by questioning its operating rules. They lack constitutional loyalty because they don’t see anything around their navel. Spain is not a state. Spain is an archipelago of uncooperative islands, led by tribal chiefs who shy away from economies of scale because their short-range interests can only be satisfied within the terms of their parish. They preach the goodness of autarchy while stealing -or at least trying to- the communal resources. Spain is a unit of destination in particular.
Sometimes, depending on the political time, the islands lose their metaphorical category and add carnivorous islets –flesh and blood- to the virtual islands. They are ridiculous and repeated aggressions. The worst of this rampant nationalism is its stubbornness, childish and tiresome. should pay the price of stupidity for returning again and again to the charge with a foreseeable end. No one is the holder of a supposed fundamental right to make the partridge dizzy and waste time – which always involves spending effort and money – for State institutions.
The Catalan Statute of 2006, in one of its additional provisions, “required” [sic] the budgetary legislator to invest in Catalonia an annual amount equivalent to the participation of the autonomous community in the GDP of the State. Years later, the Constitutional Court (TC) decaffeinated the alleged state commitment, devaluing it to the lowest level of legal rhetoric. The budget legislator according to the variable circumstances of the exercise that owes his name, according to the most conspicuous elements of human stupidity, to Mr. Francisco Franco Bahamonde. He always present for the jerks.
No tribal chief, nor the Andalusian or the Valencian –remember the famous “Camps clause”?-, for example, have been taken for granted. On March 30, 2021, the Parliament of the Balearic Islands filed an unconstitutionality appeal against the General State Budget Law for the 2021 financial year before the TC. The appellant accused the budgetary legislator of producing, by omission, an economic imbalance detrimental to the Balearic Islands, compared to the rest of the national territory, by not taking into account the PGE of 2021 the circumstance of the insular fact. According to the Balearic legislature, the parliamentary legislator would have ignored the sixth additional provision of the autonomous Statute (“A law of Cortes Generales will regulate the special Balearic regime that will recognize the specific and differential fact of its insularity”).
But the Balearic legislator errs and I use this pious verb to avoid saying that this legislator lies knowingly about his lie. Royal Decree-Law 4/2019 (which is not part of the constitutional block) approves the special regime of the Balearic Islands, but within an imperative framework that establishes two impassable limits for the recognition of the insular fact:
1.- The tax translation of the insular fact is the exclusive competence of the State, with the nuance that I will underline later.
2.- The fiscal translation of the insular fact by the State is an open situation that must be closed by national and popular sovereignty through specific policies conditioned by the circumstances inherent to each of the remaining parts of Spanish territory. Spain is structured in many territorial subsystems that cannot invoke in their favor the interests of their particular navel.
In addition, the appellant maliciously omits that the annual concretion of the insular event is not unilateral in nature but must necessarily pass the filter of the mixed commission formed by the General State Administration and the autonomous government, from whose heart the agreement will necessarily be financial corresponding to each fiscal year. This mixed commission is imposed precisely by article 18 of the aforementioned Royal Decree-Law 4/2019. The commission must use an agreed calculation methodology to determine the compensation to the Balearic Islands for its insular circumstance. The childish battle against the budgetary legislator unequivocally demonstrates that the charge of disloyalty and lack of cooperation should be imputed to his legislative chamber in the Balearic Islands.
This erotic combination is very cute. I get up and challenge the State Budget. I waste the TC’s time because I like to bother and it’s cool that others put the spotlight on me. I get tired of lying down. I get up, take off my catilinary gown, then put on my diplomatic uniform and go to the meeting of the mixed commission called for September 23, 2021 with a clean and friendly face. I sit at the table. I accept the budget transfer in my favor for an amount of 182,770,000 euros offered by the State. I take the money and run to distribute the sum among my friends. But I maintain the complaint filed against the PGE of 2021. Why? Because I like to play piracy (sorry, the most primitive lottery).
Time passes. The sentence of the TC comes out (BOE of June 12, 2023). Its fourth foundation says: “The economic balance between the various parts of the Spanish territory requires a contemplation not only of the Balearic Islands, but of the rest of Spain.” The TC underlines the validity of a principle that some constantly hide in a corner: the guaranteed freedom of the Cortes Generales.
Frown. I go to the bed. She achieved my goal thanks to a judicial threat. It has been totally free. I’m going to sleep right away. See you tomorrow. More tomorrow. naturally.
