The first vice-president and Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, has announced that the State will assume 83,252 million euros of debt from the autonomous communities. This is an unprecedented measure that benefits all common regime communities, regardless of whether or not they have debt with the FLA or another extraordinary State financing mechanism.
As the Spanish Government explained in a statement, the objective of this proposal, which was sent this past Monday to the autonomous regions for discussion at the Fiscal and Financial Policy Council on Wednesday, is to correct the over-indebtedness to which the autonomous administrations were forced during the financial crisis and which contrasts with the support they have received during the Government of Pedro Sánchez to face the health crisis derived from the pandemic or the effects of the war in Ukraine.
"With less debt, there is more Welfare State", Montero pointed out when explaining that, thanks to this measure of the Government, the CCAA will see their liabilities significantly reduced and will be in a better position to reinforce public services such as health or education.
The Association of Technicians of the Ministry of Finance (Gestha) calculates that the Canary Islands and Andalusia are the autonomous communities that will be most benefited by the forgiveness of the debt, since the State will assume 50% and 48.6% of their indebtedness, respectively. Meanwhile, according to the data offered by the Treasury, the Canary Islands will be forgiven 3,259 million, while Andalusia, the most benefited region, will be 18,791. After Andalusia, Catalonia will be forgiven 17,104 million of debt and Valencia 11,210.
In a statement, Gestha sees a "very generous effort" in the proposal of the Ministry of Finance to assume 83,252 million euros of debt from the communities of the common regime, 26.7% of the autonomous debt at the close of 2023.
In fact, even with the 21,547 million of new debt subscribed by the regions of the common regime between January and September 2024, the global indebtedness of these communities would remain at the end of the third quarter at 249,923 million.
The Treasury's proposal foresees compensating the communities for over-indebtedness assumed during the financial crisis, a figure that it sets according to the adjusted population but then corrects with several additional criteria.
Gestha estimates that the figures for the assumption of debt by the Treasury, once they are related to the indebtedness of each region, are especially high in the Canary Islands (50% of its total debt) and Andalusia (48.6%), as well as, to a lesser extent, Asturias (35.5%), Galicia (32.9%), Extremadura (32.3%) and Castilla-La Mancha (30.5%).
Behind them are La Rioja (27.6%), Murcia (27.3%), Castilla y León (26.3%), Cantabria (24.4%), Madrid (24.1%), Aragón (23.1%) and Baleares (20.3%).
Catalonia (19.9%) and the Valencian Community (19.3%) close the classification, which will be the ones that will see their debt reduced the least despite being the second and third region, respectively, to which a greater amount will be forgiven (17,104 million and 11,210 million, respectively), only behind Andalusia (18,791 million).
