The

budget

project detailed yesterday by Minister María Jesús Montero has in the chapter on State investments in the autonomous communities a faithful

reflection of the policy of alliances

and favorable treatment with which the Government conducts itself.

The distribution of the budget cake reveals how where the PSOE or its partners govern, the items allocated to infrastructures rise, while they fall or stagnate in three of the five regions governed by the PP (Galicia, Castilla and L

aeon and Murcia).

It is hard to believe that the real investment needs in the different regions almost automatically coincide with the political needs of the coalition parties.

Unlike the regional financing system, which is regulated, the allocation of funds for public works -roads, airports...-

It is an arbitrary decision of the Executive.

According to the project agreed upon in the Council of Ministers, the Government has increased the allocations destined for all the autonomies that are in socialist hands, especially Navarra (34.7% more than last year), Cantabria (23%) and Extremadura ( 16.8%).

The territories where two key partners for the Executive govern also see their incomes improve: Esquerra Catalonia (3% more) and the Basque Country, in the hands of a coalition formed by PNV and PSOE (9.1%).

It is striking that a government that defines itself as the most progressive in history decides, in a year of economic slowdown, to fatten the items destined for two of the richest communities.

The case of Catalonia, with 2,508 million euros, is symptomatic.

It will receive 190 million more than Andalusia, poorer and more populated;

and 1,203 million more than Madrid.

Regarding the budget project as a whole, these accounts cannot be called "prudent", as Minister Montero claimed yesterday.

Is about

the most expansive budgets in history

, and its macroeconomic picture has been disavowed not only by the Bank of Spain but yesterday also by BBVA Research, which forecasts GDP growth of 1% by 2023 and not 2.1%, as the Government estimates.

The project will also aggravate the intergenerational gap, since half of public spending will go to pay pensions, civil servants' salaries and debt interest, while barely 3% is dedicated to young people.

Inés Arrimadas yesterday called for a pension reform, denouncing the absurdity that these "go up seven times more than wages."

For her part,

the PP continues to play with two decks

.

Yesterday its economic spokesman, Juan Bravo, denied that the party is going to ask that the revision of the CPI not benefit the highest pensions, as Alberto Núñez Feijóo himself had suggested in June, but at the same time admitted the problem of sustainability of the system .

The electoral interest in pleasing the group of pensioners should not hijack a debate that cannot be postponed.

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