Ayuso's good news... and the bad news

The decision by Madrid's president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, to take legal action against the agreement to forgive part of the autonomous communities' debt, proposed by the vice president and Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, is of great significance, although it has gone largely unnoticed, obscured by the rapid succession of important news episodes.

At first glance, this can be seen as good news for PP voters residing in other autonomous communities other than Madrid. Ayuso's complaint seems to confirm that she is ruling herself out of the running for prime minister. Opposing debt reduction in the most distressed regions, supposedly with the sole aim of protecting her fellow citizens in Madrid, doesn't seem like the best calling card for a general election. Thus, those PP voters won't be faced with the bitter choice between the interests of their region and those of their party if Ayuso were the candidate.

With his denunciation of debt forgiveness, he seems to be renouncing the vote of those who do not live in Madrid.

Indeed, failing to acknowledge that a significant number of autonomous communities have been underfunded for decades and failing to admit that measures must be taken to resolve this situation constitute a serious act of lack of solidarity. As president of the autonomous community that houses the capital, Ayuso should consider the extent to which this fact benefits her territory. Madrid receives contributions from the rest of the autonomous communities, among other reasons because it centralizes state services, resulting in, for example, the radial structure of land and air transport infrastructure, to which millions of citizens from other communities must travel. The advantages of this scheme translate into lower taxes for the autonomous community, which, in turn, thanks to this lower tax rate, attracts capital and residents from the rest.

Ayuso's obsession is reminiscent of that of Angela Merkel, the German chancellor in the early years of the financial crisis. Merkel stubbornly refused to acknowledge the reality of how the eurozone worked: some countries consumed what Germany produced and went into debt to do so, accusing them of being irresponsible and wasteful. This was the starting point for austerity, which nearly wiped out the euro and planted the seeds of the far-right populism now gripping Europe. Ayuso recasts the Merkelian idea by dressing up Madrid residents as Germans, denying, as they did in the past, that their well-being depends on their partners—EU citizens in one case, and the rest of Spain in the other. Does Ayuso intend for the most indebted autonomous regions to further strangle their citizens by increasing their taxes? What is her proposal to improve the financial situation of these communities?

The other side is that the president intends to seize a larger share of the state's money.

Furthermore, she takes pains to focus her analysis solely on the regional financing system, when it is well known that this is only one part, and not the largest, of the relationship between the State and the autonomous communities. Essential items, such as public investment, the pension system, and the financing of state entities, have yet to be included. In the first of these two cases, both the volume of investment and the percentage of execution show a disproportionately favorable balance for the leader's community. The figures are embarrassing for successive governments of recent decades, despite their presumptions of neutrality.

So much for the good news; Ayuso appears to want to stay in Puerta del Sol. The flip side of the Madrid region's complaint is that Ayuso has reportedly detected that the position of president of this region still has a long political runway and can extract more benefits from it in terms of power and influence.

Until now, it was clear that his staunch opposition to resolving both the high and unpayable debt of the autonomous communities and a new model that provides economic and political solutions to the most disadvantaged was intended to obscure the reality of Madrid's relations with the rest of Spain, especially the so-called "empty Spain," the region most affected by the vacuum effect.

But what's emerging is that the hypertrophy and excessive centralization of the Madrid system is approaching its limit. The Madrid model can no longer continue to absorb resources from the rest of the country with lower taxes and addressing its growing need for infrastructure and public investment to avoid serious operational problems. Cutting taxes is no longer enough.

The next step is to take over a substantial portion of the state budget to continue this expansion. And a new regional financing system that truly addresses the needs of the most unfairly treated is incompatible with that plan.

A new front is thus emerging in the political battle over financing. On the one hand, Catalonia, as always proposing new models, usually greeted with resounding outrage by most of the other autonomous communities, but which, once approved, they end up demanding for themselves as well; and Madrid, dissatisfied with any improvement that prevents it from securing a new special quota to finance its project of further centralizing all interesting activities. The supposed Catalan quota, which no one is proposing, although that matters little to those who denounce it as if it were an incontestable truth, is the great trompe l'oeil behind which Ayuso and her colleagues advance their ambition to grab an even larger share of the money raised by the State to finance their expansion plan.