The evolution of the autonomic financing model in Spain. Evaluation and perspectives

Abstract

The territorial organization of the Spanish State arising from the 1978 Constitution provided the Autonomous Communities with an open framework of competencies (art. 148 and 150.2) for whose exercise they enjoy guaranteed financial autonomy with a system of their own or transferred resources (arts. 156 and 157). These resources, their structure and their regulation, form the constitutional system of autonomous financing that began its journey in the early eighties with the approval of the Organic Law of Financing of the Autonomous Communities, the Statutes of autonomy and the laws of cession of tributes to each community.

This financing system, necessarily also open, has already contemplated several models that have been happening as the development of skills and the increase of regional financial needs has been growing, as evidenced by the history of these last forty years.

However the current situation is based on a model that has more than a decade (2009) without having been updated, which together with the economic crisis of recent years, the budgetary stability required from Europe and political instability, It has caused a very delicate situation for the regional finances that have been sustained with state resources provided through various financing funds and very limited access to the issuance of public debt. Although the reform of the model is a unanimous claim of all the Communities, the situation in Catalonia and its demands to have a differentiated regime similar to the Basque Country and Navarre offers today a not clear landscape.